Required to be constantly recumbent I write slowly and with difficulty.... Weakened in body by infirmities and in mind by age, now far gone into my 83rd year, reading one newspaper only and forgetting immediately what I read.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.

We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.

I have nothing but contempt for anyone who can spell a word in only one way.