Education is the cheap defense of nations.

Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.

Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

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.

By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.