Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.

Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation has convinced me that this would be very mischievous.

...let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

Equal rights for all, special privileges for none

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals.

I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.