The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

While prudence will endeavor to avoid this issue of war, bravery will prepare to meet it.

The power of making war often prevents it.

Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.

I do love this people [the French] with all my heart, and think that with a better religion and a better form of government and their present governors their condition and country would be most enviable.

Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.

[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.