To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

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.

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils.

And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.

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.

It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments.