Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Delay is preferable to error.

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

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.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

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.

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?