Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust.

Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.

The earth belongs to the living. No man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he occupied or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the payment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might, during his own life, eat up the use of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living. No generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.

Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.

It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold and silver coin], is a good or an evil I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.

It has been thought that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law. But I do not know this to be true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle.

Courts love the people always, as wolves do the sheep.