Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another. It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man.

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?

Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.

It is the object only of war that makes it honorable.

What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.

A government of our own is our natural right; and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.