As government grows, freedom recedes.

I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

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.

I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

No stile of writing is so delightful as that which is all pith, which never omits a necessary word, nor uses an unnecessary one.