I am a planter - a cotton planter. I am a Southern man and a slaveholder - a kind and a merciful one, I trust - and none the worse for being a slaveholder.

There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.

I never use the word nation in speaking of the United States. I always use the word Union or Confederacy. We are not a nation but a union, a confederacy of equal and sovereign States.

Irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty, and must corrupt those who exercise it.

In looking back, I see nothing to regret, and little to correct.

The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail.

The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.

It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers.

Beware the wrath of a patient adversary.

The will of a majority is the will of a rabble. Progressive democracy is incompatable with liberty.

Whatever God or whatever higher power you believe in, they brought us to this earth in a perfect way, and you have to learn to love yourself. Otherwise, it's an exhausting way to be.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration.

Our shock that reality is other than expected is weirdly tenacious

To learn a thing in life and through doing is much more developing, cultivating, and strengthening than to learn it merely through the verbal communication of ideas.

The challenge to each human is creation. Will you create with reverence, or with neglect?

And woe succeeds woe.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

Take a dose of medicine once, and in all probability you will be obliged to take an additional hundred afterwards

Don't be late to the theater. The opening scene is a goody.