As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.

The cutting of heads is become so much a la mode, that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders.

You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.

It is in the love of one's family only that heartfelt happiness is known.

. . . in the full tide of successful experiment.

I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.

...in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them