When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near it. You may repent not having seen it, but you can never repent having seen it.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be ... The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe.

Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.

We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.

I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe.... They are nations of eternal war.