I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

...in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them