An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

The issuing power [of money] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.