The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force.