Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.

The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.