“It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.”

Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.

If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they will be despised.

If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market – define your customers – then find or develop a product for them.

As a parent you try to maintain a certain amount of control and so you have this tug-of-war … You have to learn when to let go. And that’s not easy.

Why should things be easy to understand?

The easiest way to kill a cult is to make that cult accessible.

One can easily make the mistake to lose yourself – incompletely.

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one’s stature on the edge of the door.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

A circle cannot fill a triangle, so neither can the whole world, if it were to be compassed, the heart of man; a man may as easily fill a chest with grace as the heart with gold. The air fills not the body, neither doth money the covetous mind of man.