“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

I like to sit on things and digest them and then I’ll figure out my next move, but I never said I was right for doing anything.

I allow readers to fill in the details as necessary. But I don’t force kids to have to digest something they’re not mature enough or ready for yet.

Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.

I run 5 miles every night. It’s where I go to digest my day, hash out the multitude of information that’s been poured into me in the last wild six months or so, and to try and condense it down to some sort of cohesive strategy to live my life by.

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.

Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.