“An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.”

It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.

All money is a matter of belief.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.

Defense is superior to opulence.

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.

Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

I am a beau in nothing but my books.

The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.

Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.

Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

People are bloody ignorant apes.

Ignorance is not innocence but sin.

There will be a great loss of learning before the moon’s full cycle is completed. Fire and floods will be fomented by ignorant rulers; much time will go by before it is rectified.

Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.

When something comes to my brain, I don’t ignore it. You never know what it’s going to turn into.

They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it.