[The Federal Convention] is really an assembly of demigods.

I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.