The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man

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

The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves and united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only.

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.

Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.

The possession of facts is knowledge; the use of them is wisdom.