We beseech [God] to pardon our national and other transgressions.

To the security of a free Constitution it [knowledge] contributes in various ways: by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights, to discern and provide against invasions of them, to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority, between burdens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society.

We can not guarantee success, we can strive to deserve it.

The alternate triumphs of different parties ... make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels.

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.

It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.