If it was wise, manly, and patriotic for us to establish a free government, it is equally wise to attend to the necessary means of its preservation.

It is better to spread trust all around than to hand out money!

By the last returns to the Department of War the militia force of the several States may be estimated at 800,000 men - infantry, artillery, and cavalry.

I enter on the trust to which I have been called by the suffrages of my fellow-citizens with my fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor.

How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.

[In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places.

Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.