I am a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work the more luck I have.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations entangling alliances with none.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just that his justice cannot sleep forever.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.
The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.