 If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason. |
| Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages. |
| Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations. |
| Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. |
| In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. |
| Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect. |
| All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree. |
| Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence. |
| Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power. |
| I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property. |
| By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt. |
| What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? |
| A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States. |
| It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. |
| Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. |
| The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries. |
| The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state. |
| Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. |
| Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors. |
| The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world. |
