Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

Wherein you reprove another be unblameable yourself, for example is more prevalent than precepts.

Decision making, like coffee, needs a cooling process.

I’ll die on my feet before I’ll live on my knees!

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.

George Washington famously warned against … ‘ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for it is a sign of a tractable and commendable nature; and in all cases of passion admit reason to govern.

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

The great mass of our Citizens require only to understand matters rightly, to form right decisions.

If the cause is advanced, indifferent is it to me where or in what quarter it happens.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

[T]he gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape.

I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.