The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.

Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

I prefer to be remembered for what I have done for others, not what others have done for me.

I apprehend... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse.

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.