My general plan would be to make the States one as to everything connected with foreign nations and several as to everything purely domestic.

I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures.

There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.

I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it.