When people are informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Society naturally divides itself into the few and the many...the rich and the mass of the people. Give the rich a substantial share of the government to check the unsteadiness of the people. Those who own the country ought to govern it.

Power corrupts. Few politicians die and none resign.

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Our real disease is democracy.

A nation without a National Government is an Awful Spectacle.

Women and children are rendered more useful by working in factories than they would otherwise be.

The manufacturing establishments...not only (create goods and wealth)...they make a nation greater than it possibly could be without them. We need not fear to be outdone by any other people on earth.

The mobs of the great cities contribute as much to good government as sores do to the health of the human body. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

(Urban life) furnishes greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions (among different people)

Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow banks to control their currency, the corporations which grow up around banks will deprive them of their property until, one day, their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Money...is the vital principle...it sustains life and motion.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Such a resistance is treason against society, against liberty, against everything that ought to be dear to a free, enlightened, and prudent people. To tolerate it were to abandon your most precious interests. Not to subdue it, were to tolerate it.