I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

• Old minds are like old horses you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
• I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
• Fear is the foundation of most governments.
• Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
• When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
• Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
• Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
• There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
• The happiness of society is the end of government.
• A government of laws, and not of men.