The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government

If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.

In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.

I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.

The more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained.