Sensibility of mind is indeed the parent of every virtue, but it is the parent of much misery, too.

The merchants will manage [commerce] the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves.

Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose.

Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.

The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast . . . would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.