I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

The dead should not rule the living.

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.

The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government.

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)

Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies; and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. the same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people, or that of the (best men; nobles) should prevail, were questions which kept the states of Greece and rome in eternal convulsions...