We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.

A government of our own is our natural right

Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.

Let the world see that this nation can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to her bravest valor in time of war.

Titles do not count with posterity.

Evils, like poisons, have their uses, and there are diseases which no other remedy can reach.