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.

Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it.

When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.

Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.

As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.

The government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.

The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.