The most uninformed mind with a healthy body is happier than the wisest valetudinarian.

The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.

Should [reformers] attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim.

It is every Americans' right and obligation to read and interpret the Constitution for himself.

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

no one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government.

I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.