Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.

Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external invasion.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.

As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

The first duty of man is to take none of the principles of conduct upon trust; to do nothing without a clear and individual conviction that it is right to be done.

Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.