A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

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

Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.

The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but it is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and fagot, and the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences.

A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men.

The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax