Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

I flatter myself [we] have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.

Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe until a trespass on the Constitution provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents and invasion of the dearest rights.

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

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

American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil.