Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.

The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.

The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know...Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly [with your God]. This is enough.

Elections to office, which are the great objects of ambition, I look at with terror!

Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.