The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.

Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing ... this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.

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

It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.

We are overdone with banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium... These have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness... These are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.

[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.

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