It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work

God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

Every court of criminal justice must have the power of correcting the greatest and dangerous of all abuses of the forms of law - that of the protracted imprisonment of the accused, untried, perhaps not intended ever to be tried, it may be, not informed of the nature of the charge against him, or the name of the accuser.

It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.

Everything is sold to skill and labor; and where nature furnishes the materials, they are still rude and unfinished, till industry, ever active and intelligent, refines them from their brute state, and fits them for human use and convenience.

Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.