It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.

The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

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

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.

Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.

To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.