He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.

As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.

It has been thought that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law. But I do not know this to be true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle.

No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be ... The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe.

The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.