I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.

On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

I have been long sensible that while I was endeavoring to render our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising generation on the level of our sister states (which they have proudly held heretofore), I was discharging the odious function of a physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient insensible of needing it.

Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.

In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.

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

Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.