It's of more importance to community that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished

[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

Mr. Adams, describing a conversation with Jonathan Sewall in 1774, says: "I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination."

During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.

Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?