The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.

I prefer to be remembered for what I have done for others, not what others have done for me.

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.

I have not observed mens honesty to increase with their riches.

In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.