 Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error. |
| There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. |
| You must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. |
| There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it. |
| The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none. |
| The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws. |
| I feel in the depths of my soul that it is the highest, most sacred, and most irreversible part of my obligation to preserve the union of these states, although it may cost me my life. |
| Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms. |
| The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough. |
| Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there. |
| I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an Emperor or a King my republican feelings and principles forbid it the simplicity of our system of government forbids it. |
| I would sincerely regret, and which never shall happen whilst I am in office, a military guard around the President. |
| There is nothing that I shudder at more than the idea of a separation of the Union. Should such an event ever happen, which I fervently pray God to avert, from that date I view our liberty gone. |
| All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary. |
| Never take counsel of your fears. |
| The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts in the hour of danger. |
| In England the judges should have independence to protect the people against the crown. Here the judges should not be independent of the people, but be appointed for not more than seven years. The people would always re-elect the good judges. |
| If the Union is once severed, the line of separation will grow wider and wider, and the controversies which are now debated and settled in the halls of legislation will then be tried in fields of battle and determined by the sword. |
| No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody. |
| The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality. |
