The most common and durable source of faction has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me "the writer of the Constitution of the United States." This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

The rights of man as the foundation of just Government had been long understood but the superstructures projected had been sadly defective

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.