“Greatness consists not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private rants of life. To be great at all one must be great here, now, in Philadelphia.”

“Let every man or woman here, if you never hear me again, remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and with what you are, in Philadelphia, now.”

“You can journey to the ends of the earth in search of success, but if you’re lucky, you will discover happiness in your own backyard.”

“Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to greatness in virtue.”

“Noone has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be wholly false. The most fruitful philosophies have contained glaring inconsistencies, but for that very reason have been partially true. There is no reason to suppose that a self-consistent system contains more truth than one which, like Locke’s, is more or less wrong.”

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”

“There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things.”