That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subject on which he is to legislate.

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

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

Resistance to tyranny is service to God.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

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.