I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.

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.

It is a position not to be controverted, that the earth ... was and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.