“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”

Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

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.

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Life is a book that never ends. Chapters close, but not the book itself. The end of one physical incarnation is like the end of a chapter, on some level setting up the beginning of another.

I think we learn more from those times in our history where we stumbled as a democracy than we learn from the glorious chapters.

God doesn’t want religious duty. He doesn’t want a distracted, half-hearted, ‘Fine, I’ll read a chapter, now are You happy?’ attitude. God wants His word to be a delight to us, so much that we meditate on it day and night.

Do not judge my story by the chapter you walked in on.

I always knew you loved the ocean from the way you dived in and out of me.

She stopped reading over the prologue she realized she had too many chapters left to write-moving on.

It was only when I accepted the end of our story, Was i able to begin a new chapter with a better man.

Declutter is the first chapter in the book of minimalism.