Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.

In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,—and too often both priest and lawyer have framed or made in part this instrument.

Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

Priestly was the first (unless it was Becarria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth--that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.