Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.
The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.
The equal rights of man and the happiness of every individual are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual.
The rights of the people to the exercise and fruits of their own industry can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods.
The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.
There is not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America.
Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.
We should be determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.
While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.
Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha.
A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.
Excessive taxation ... will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
The most effective means of preventing tyranny is to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts.
I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.
Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful Land, traversing all the seas with the rich production of their Industry.
There are other places at which ... the laws have said there shall be towns; but Nature has said there shall not, and they remain unworthy of enumeration.
The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.
Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want.
It is unfortunate that the efforts of mankind to recover the freedom of which they have been so long deprived, will be accompanied with violence, with errors, and even with crimes. But while we weep over the means, we must pray for the end.
I see now our fireside formed into a groupe, no one member of which has a fibre in their composition which can ever produce any jarring or jealousies among us. No irregular passions, no dangerous bias, which may render problematical the future fortunes and happiness of our descendants.
But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
I learn with great concern that one portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.
The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem one of the essential principles of our government, and consequently one of those which ought to shape its administration.
I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.
I never before knew the full value of trees. Under them I breakfast, dine, write, read and receive my company.
As you are entered with the class of Nat. philosophy, give to it the hours of lecture, but devote all your other time to Mathematics, avoiding company as the bane of all progress.
Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system.
I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.
When two parties make a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute it.
The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ.
It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.
The constitution of the United States is the result of the collected wisdom of our country.
I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.
His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers... He was the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.
My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.
Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people.
Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war.
It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
The fortune of our lives depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
Music, drawing, books, invention and exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.
Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.
Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.
I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may.
Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
In a virtuous and free state, no rewards can be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest my poor endeavours should fall short of the kind expectations of my country.
The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.
Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any
immediate solution to the problem.
Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.
I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people and manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know.
Every man's reason is his own rightful umpire. This principle, with that of acquiescence in the will of the majority, will preserve us free and prosperous as long as they are sacredly observed.
What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.
It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.
Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.
Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good government... Therefore schools and the means of educating the people should always be encouraged.
Where everyman is participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year but everyday, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.
We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations.
I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.
There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.
The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution.
And, in general, that branch which is to act ultimately and without appeal on any law is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other coordinate authorities.
The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty ... students perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens.
I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth.
The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.
Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.
But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.
We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body.
The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.
The Declaration of Independence ... is the declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.
The merchants will manage commerce the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves.
The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.
The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end.