Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.

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

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

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

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'

If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.