It is the great parent of science & of virtue: and that a nation will be great in both, always in proportion as it is free. |
Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom. |
Money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations. |
The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government. |
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. |
I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time. |
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors. |
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give. |
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him; every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him; and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right. |
I have indeed two great measures at heart,
without which no republic can maintain itself in strength:
1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself
what will secure or endanger his freedom.
2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all
the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it. |
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. |
Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried. |
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. |
The sword of the law should never fall but on those whose guilt is so apparent as to be pronounced by their friends as well as foes. |
...truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. |
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. |
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate therefore the gold from the dross; restore to him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines led me to try to sift them apart. |
Botany I rank
with the most
valuable sciences. |
During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. |
History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. |
