"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."

"Laws, like houses, lean on one another."

"The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific."

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

"In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature."

"Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits."

"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny."

"I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people."

"The writers against religion whilst they oppose every system are wisely careful never to set up any of their own."

"If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived."

"Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants."

"The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time."

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."

"The march of the human mind is slow."

"Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government."

"You can never plan the future by the past."

"The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

"He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one."

"To innovate is not to reform."

"He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."

"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all."

"He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls."

"Queen of arts and daughter of heaven."

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."

"You cannot plan the future by the past."

"Education is the cheap defense of nations."

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."

"Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing."

"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."

"It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact."

"People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous."

"Dangers by being despised grow great."

"Falsehood is a perennial spring."

"By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation."

"It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do."

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."

"Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants."

"What shadows we are what shadows we pursue!"