The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.

In short I must confide in you to take such care of the men under you as an economical householder would of his own family, doingevery thing within himself as far as he can, and calling for as few supplies as possible. The less you depend for supplies from this quarter, the less you will be disappointed.

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.

no one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government.

You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.

No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.