The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.

It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.

The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens...must be broken, or it will break us.

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.