I served with General Washington in die Legislature of Virginia...and...with Doctor Franklin in Congress. I never heard neither of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point.

Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.

Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skinsand furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.

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.

If the present 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?

The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also.

[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.