Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?
The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.
In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.
A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.
War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.