No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.

We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.

The mills of God grind slowly.

I saw in States' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.... Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.