Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.

On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.

Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather shall be little regarded. If the body is feeble, the mind will not be strong.

The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us.

It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted.