A true patriot will defend his country from its government.

I join cordially in admiring and revering the Constitution of the United States, the result of the collected wisdom of our country. That wisdom has committed to us the important task of proving by example that a government, if organized in all its parts on the Representative principle unadulterated by the infusion of spurious elements, if founded, not in the fears & follies of man, but on his reason, on his sense of right, on the predominance of the social over his dissocial passions, may be so free as to restrain him in no moral right, and so firm as to protect him from every moral wrong.

By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.

Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.

Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.