Liberty is to faction what air is to fire.

If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?

The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

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 power over the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

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.