Although our prospect is peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our resources are competent.

The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.

It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.

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

We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good.