The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy . . . to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous . . . let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb

To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.