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

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and opressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

If you want something you’ve never had, You must be willing to do something you’ve never done.

When angry, count 10. before you speak; if very angry, 100.

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.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

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.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

Fears, even the most basic ones, can totally destroy our ambitions. Fear, if left unchecked, can destroy our lives. Fear is one of the many enemies lurking inside us.

Success is based on imagination plus ambition and the will to work.

I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

I think, as you get older, that’s when your ambitions become “peculiar”.

A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.