Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.

Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end.

I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the general government.

Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.