It is simple to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and private gain. It is more comfortable to sit content in the easy approval of friends and of neighbours than to risk the friction and the controversy that comes with public affairs. It is easier to fall in step with the slogans of others than to march to the beat of the internal drummer - to make and stand on judgements of your own. And it far easier to accept and to stand on the past, than to fight for the answers of the future

Corruption of morals is rapid enough in any country without a bounty from government. And...the Chief Magistrate of the United States should be the last man to accelerate its progress.

Now is the time when men work quietly in the fields and women weep softly in the kitchen; the legislature is in session and no man's property is safe.

There is always room at the top.

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.

I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.