“Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

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.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

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.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

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.