History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.

We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.

How to check these unconstitutional invasions of rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.