The consequences of these institutions (The towns or districts, the congregations, the schools,and the militia.) have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

The real fabric of American society is not all those flags you see on people's cars...it's in the Bill of Rights and in our constitutional form of government.

He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.

Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.

The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.

Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!' But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company-I mean hell.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.