I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

With the same honest views, the most honest men often form different conclusions.

The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

In every country where man is free to think and to speak, difference of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences, when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently, and leaving our horizon more bright and serene.