Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.

An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch.

Private enterprise manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.

[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore . . . never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.

The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.

If we could believe that Jesus...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter.

the boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.