If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.

I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.

The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.

Take more pleasure in giving what is best to another than in having it for yourself, and then all the world will love you.

I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it [fanaticism] could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation.