The people are not always well-informed, but is better that they have misconceptions that make them restless than that they be lethargic-for lethargy in the people means death for republics.

With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

He [Washington] has often declared to me that he considered our new constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it. And these declarations he repeated to me the oftener and the more pointedly.

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.

The more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained.

Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.