I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.

I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them

I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.