Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it.

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.

Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.

The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.

There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state.

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?

Elections to office, which are the great objects of ambition, I look at with terror!