Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.

Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.

He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.

Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.