Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Even the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were there a pecuniary interest involved.

To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them.

No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.