[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.

The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.

The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.

We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.

The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.