“The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

God’s canopy is over you and will cover you at all times, preserving you from evil.

Kill off all my demons and my angels might die too.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes.

All diseases begin in the gut.

You always want what you can’t have, and that all-American thing, from the day I was born,

It may be true that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.

In other countries you can do high-level maths or general maths, whereas we’ve just got all-or-nothing.

The natural force within each of us is that greatest healer of all.