All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.

Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.

The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous excess, a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States.

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

The yielding of the weak is the concession to fear.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.