Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading through up to your eyes in blood, you could only end up where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found... all is confusion beyond it.

Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

To innovate is not to reform.

Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.