A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.

If we abide by the principles taught by the Bible, our country will go on prospering.

I am committed against every thing which in my judgment, may weaken, endanger, or destroy (the Constitution) ... and especially against all extension of Executive power; and I am committed against any attempt to rule the free people of this country by the power and the patronage of the Government itself.

A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

It is no monopoly in any other sense than as a man's own house is a monopoly. But a man's right to his own invention is a very different matter. It is no more a monopoly for him to possess that, than to possess his own homestead .

Thank God, I also am an American!

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.