Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.

To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim

If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastester. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infintely more advantage than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of Nations, does not that of Court Governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation, places, and offices.

Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured

No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.

...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.