“The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.”

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

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.

Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes.

To the contrary, I’ve found that the happiest people have found some cause and they stride through life propelled by a commitment.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy.

I’m still happy with the way Einstein’s Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words.

I gotta keep busy. I’m not happy unless I’m working on two, three things.

There are two things that I get a lot of pleasure from in my life, and that is, doing what I know how to do well – that really makes me happy.