To presume a want of motives for such contests . . . would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.

When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.

A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.

As you sometimes swear by him that made you, I conclude your sentiments do not correspond with his, in that which is the basis of the doctrine you both agree in: and this makes it impossible to imagine whence this congruity between you arises. "To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable.

Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.

There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.