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

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

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of ... constitutional principles.

Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure.

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

Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assuage the disease.

[The public has] the habit now of invalidating opinions emanating from me by reference to my age and infirmities.