Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy.

Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.

An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.