Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold.

That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth

The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.

The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.