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

As good government is an empire of laws, how shall your laws be made? In a large society, inhabiting an extensive country, it is impossible that the whole should assemble to make laws. The first necessary step, then, is to depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and good.

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

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

The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.

I have long been settled in my own opinion that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Interest, will ever govern nations or Parties, against their vanity, their Pride, their Resentment, or Revenge, or their Avarice, or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.

July 4th ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion.