Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.

The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.

The art of reading is to skip judiciously.

Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.

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.

Its objects are CONTRACTS with foreign nations which have the force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith.