I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Without books, I would certainly die.

With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith."

We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .

Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government.