Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

Equal laws protecting equal rights…the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country.

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

[The Republican Party] consists of those who, believing in the doctrine that mankind are capable of governing themselves and hating hereditary power as an insult to the reason and an outrage to the rights of men, are naturally offended at every public measure that does not appeal to the understanding and to the general interest of the community.

[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others.

One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.