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

Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.

Our ancestors ... possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them.

I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income.

I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.

I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives. For it is in our lives, and not from our works, that our religion must be read.