The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.

The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.

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

Uncritical reverence for the Founding Fathers was less ubiquitous while they actually lived. . . . "The Reign of Terror that raged in America during the latter end of the Washington Administration, and the whole of that of Adams, is enveloped in mystery to me. That there were men in the Government hostile to the representative system, was once their toast, though it is now their overthrow, and therefore the fact is established against them."