The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.