Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise.

To persevere in one's duty, and be silent is the best answer to calumny

The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity.

When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

Honesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy; let us then as a Nation be just.