I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.

That the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.

The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.

Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences.

May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.

[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.