“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.”

They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

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.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

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.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

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.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

You don’t need a city charter to know that education is the foundation of any community.