Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want.

The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].

A republic will avoid war unless the avoidance might create conditions that are worse than warfare itself. Sometimes, the dispositions of those who choose to make themselves our enemies leaves us no choice.

Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.

I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.