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

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 internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.

Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

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.

There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

People will ask me, “How do you approach writing books for young readers differently than for adults?” My answer is always: I don’t change anything about the story itself.

There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had

The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible.

From the expressive capabilities of the vocalizing or of the sound itself, which allows me to create my own meaning for it, which elevates it into a higher piece of work for me.

The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.

A really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I’ve seen actors do that.

Yet is still allowed in potatoes and bananas at levels exposing up to 80,000 children a day to what EPA itself says are unacceptable high risks.

I’ve always felt that the game itself is pretty much a melody and I am there to provide the lyrics.