The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.

All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects.

If we take a survey of the greatest actions...in the world...we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position.

. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

The appearance of religion only on Sunday proves that it is only an appearance.

A single assembly is apt to grow ambitious, and after a time will not hesitate to vote itself perpetual. This was one fault of the Long Parliament; but more remarkably of Holland, whose assembly first voted themselves from annual to septennial, then for life, and after a course of years, that all vacancies happening by death or otherwise, should be filled by themselves, without any application to constituents at all.