Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market.

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.