We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path ... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

...I do not mean to say that this general government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world; but I do think that it is charged with the duty of preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.