They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.

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.

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.

The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Education is a nation's cheapest defence