I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.

The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.

The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.