The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.

The following [addition to the Bill of Rights] would have pleased me: The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the [United States] with foreign nations.

Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible to civilization. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that the reformation must be worked.