The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power.

When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge of making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can never be worth their while to go to war for profit's sake. If they are made war upon, their country invaded, or their existence at stake, it is their duty to defend and preserve themselves, but in every other light, and from every other cause, is war inglorious and detestable.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.

A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right.

There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.