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

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

I cannot live without books.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none

On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice.

We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear.

The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.

The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subjects.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.