My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.

Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender.

The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.

History teaches the young the virtues of freedom. By apprising them of the past it will enable them to judge the future.

Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.