Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of...

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

Altho’ I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible...

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our...

No defender of slavery, I concede that it has its benevolent aspects in lifting the Negro from savagery and helping prepare him for that eventual freedom which is surely written in the Book of Fate

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that...

Information is the currency of democracy.

The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

I served with General Washington in the Legislature of Virginia… and… with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point.

Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility

Believing that happiness of mankind is best promoted by the useful pursuits of peace, that on these alone a stable prosperity can be founded, that the evils of war are great in their endurance, and...

It is neither wealth nor splendor? but tranquillity and occupation which givehappiness.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof...

Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in...

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of...

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.