Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural.

We do, then, most solemnly before God and the world declare that regardless of every consequence, at the risk of every distress, the arms we have been compelled to assume we will use with perseverance, exerting to their utmost energies all those powers which our Creator hath given us to preserve that liberty which he committed to us in sacred deposit and to protect from every hostile hand our lives and our properties.

The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.