Quote collection
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"When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community. The objects of their desires are changed; what they were fond of before has become indifferent; they were free while under the restraint of laws, but they would fain now be free to act against law."
"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep he waters pure."
"Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves."
"I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared"
"When two parties make a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute it."
"There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks."
"The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth."
"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
"The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood."
"The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise."
"We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour."
"If any doubt has arisen as to me, my country [Virginia] will have my political creed in the form of a "Declaration &c." which I was lately directed to draw. This will give decisive proof that my own sentiment concurred with the vote they instructed us to give."
"[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government."
"It is a cruel thought, that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not."
"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess."
"That government that governs least governs best."
"The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here in Europe."
"Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight."
"I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old."
"Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us."