Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Fear is the foundation of most governments.
Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
In politics the middle way is none at all.
Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals.
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.
I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.
Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
