I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

Nothing but good can result from an exchange of information and opinions between those whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of the integrity of their views.

I considered 4 of these bills [of the revised code of Virginia] as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican.