That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.

The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?