Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.

Man ... feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.

Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith."

My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war-and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair.