“Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.”

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.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

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.

I would never do a commercial if I thought it was offensive to anyone.

Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials — they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think — rather than letting you figure it out on your own.

I have always made commercial music.

The people who vote for the Grammy nominees are mostly in their 40s and have other jobs or are musicians themselves. They like music that they can relate to – they like commercial music.

I don’t like hearing Beatles songs in commercials. It almost renders them useless. I think, ‘Oh God, another one bites the dust.’

I would never put my songs in a commercial.

Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.

Happiness doesn’t come from commercial success but from the quality of work that you give back to your immediate community.