From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.

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.

We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them

The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.