Quote collection
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"He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls."
"There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world."
"Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things."
"The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little."
"Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality."
"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."
"Fraud is the ready minister of injustice."
"I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it."
"Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."
"True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting."
"Free trade is not based on utility but on justice."
"They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance."
"Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver."
"It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do."
"The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere."
"Ambition can creep as well as soar."
"In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things."
"In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority...and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species."
"Religion, to have any force upon men's understandings,--indeed, to exist at all,--must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance upon any human institution, else it would be the absurdest thing in the world,--an acknowledged cheat."
"Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure."