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

In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.... Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged.... Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.

Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way, is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object shifts light.

The wisdom of our ages and the blood of our heroes has been devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed of our political faith.

Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs.

The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.

Tranquility is the old man's milk.