No society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.

We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.

Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.

I would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers.

That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

I apprehend... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse.