Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.
It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.
With all the imperfections of our present government, it is without comparison the best existing, or that ever did exist.
The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It had only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican.
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.
Take more pleasure in giving what is best to another than in having it for yourself, and then all the world will love you.
The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.
The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being
Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.
The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.
The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly.
Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs.
There is a fulness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance.
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful Land, traversing all the seas with the rich production of their Industry.
No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.
I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is the most unfit man I know for such a place.
For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
For Heaven's sake discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum.
Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.
People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace.
Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution.
All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.
The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.
It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end.
The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam [to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.
I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.
Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.
Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.
The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.
How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!
If the measures which have been pursued are approved by the majority, it is the duty of the minority to acquiesce and conform.
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.
I have always said that a studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.
Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
The cutting of heads is become so much a la mode, that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders.
The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.
We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .
If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.
It is wonderful to me that old men should not be sensible that their minds keep pace with their bodies in the progress of decay.
Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.