The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.

To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government] though the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.

The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings.

I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.