"Never [enter] into dispute or argument with..." - Quote by Thomas Jefferson

“Our public credit is good, but the abundance of paper has produced a spirit of gambling in the funds, which has laid up our ships at the wharves as too slow instruments of profit, and has even disarmed the hand of the tailor of his needle and thimble. They say the evil will cure itself. I wish it may; but I have rarely seen a gamester cured, even by the disasters of his vocation.”

“We are completely saddled and bridled, and... the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where it will guide.”

“We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists”

“Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.”

“I grow more and more suspicious of the political powers that take men away from their work and set them shooting one another.”

“[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.”

“The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken to what is said and to answer to the purpose.”

“Oh, well, if you want original conversations, you'd better go and talk to yourself.”

“there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter of fact, plain spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.”