The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.