I determined to spend the Remainder of my Days in privacy and Retirement with my Children, from whose Society alone I cou’d expect Comfort.

In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim – that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.

I am now pretty far advanced in life, and all my views are center’d in the Happiness and well-fare of my children; you will therefore find from me every Indulgence which you have a right to expect from an affectionate Parent.

The Laws of Nature are the Laws of God, Whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to Him from whose punishment they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey.

Don’t wait around for your life to happen to you. Find something that makes you happy, and do it. Because everything else is all just background noise.

Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.

Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.

Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state.

Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people.

[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.