In Europe the object is to make the most of their land, labour being abundant: here it is to make the most of our labour, land being abundant.

Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.

I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.