To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.

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

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.... The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.

Were I to define the British constitution, therefore, I should say, it is a limited monarchy, or a mixture of the three forms of government commonly known in the schools, reserving as much of the monarchical splendor, the aristocratical independency, and the democratical freedom, as are necessary that each of these powers may have a control, both in legislation and execution, over the other two, for the preservation of the subject's liberty.

Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.