Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.

This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe. at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together.

In our own native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it. For the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.