The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity

Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.

Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.

An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings...than a lazy lounger...too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labor.

[If] the nature of ... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.