A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.

The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.

Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.

Time never fails to bring every exalted reputation to a strict scrutiny.

I have heard it remarked that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion they have not reasoned themselves into.

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.