This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe. at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together.

Your own reason is the only oracle given to you by God.

A room without books is like a life without meaning.

letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.

Our ancestors ... were laborers, not lawyers.