So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.

I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force.

We may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights and especially that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient.

I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.

I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.