Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honor.

Liberty cannot be purchased by a wish.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.

Virtue is not hereditary.

I disbelieve all holy men and holy books.

If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.