[If] the nature of ... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.

ours are the only farmers who can read Homer

Freedom, the first-born of science.

When the heart is right, the feet are swift.

I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.