“We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.”

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

Heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound.

Every man thinks God is on his side.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

The harder the conflict, the greater the triumph.

The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.

Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power.

Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a person’s own mind, than on the externals in the world.

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

A sensible woman can never be happy with a fool.

If the cause is advanced, indifferent is it to me where or in what quarter it happens.

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.