Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

I have been long sensible that while I was endeavoring to render our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising generation on the level of our sister states (which they have proudly held heretofore), I was discharging the odious function of a physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient insensible of needing it.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.

Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.

Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.