“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.”

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.

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.

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

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.