[Property] embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

To consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The rich man, when contributing to a permanent plan for the education of the poor, ought to reflect that he is providing for that of his own descendants; and the poor man who concurs in a provision for those who are not poor that at no distant day it may be enjoyed by descendants from himself. It does not require a long life to witness these vicissitudes of fortune.

The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.

[Montesquieu] lifted the veil from the venerable errors which enslaved opinion, and pointed the way to those luminous truths of which he had but a glimpse himself.