What a perversion of the normal order of things! ... to make power the primary and central object of the social system, and Liberty but its satellite.

We've staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all our heart.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves.

Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.

[I]t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.

To what expedient then shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government, as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.