If science produces no better fruits than tyranny... I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable as our neighbouring savages are.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy . . . Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.

Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations.

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

My principles, and those always received by the republicans, do not admit to removing any person from office merely for a difference of political opinion. Malversations in office, and the exerting of official influence to control the freedom of election are good causes for removal.