We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.

Pray how does your asparagus perform?

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate to the business of restraining the passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and protecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the people . . . . Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power, which can be resisted only by passions, interest, and power.

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.

Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it [law of nature], as a resource to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware.