Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

The consequences of these institutions (The towns or districts, the congregations, the schools,and the militia.) have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature.

God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.

They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.

I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.