The object of a Constitution is to restrain the Government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals.

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.

No matter how far I try to travel from people, people always appear. Either they follow me, or they're already there, and I followed them, unwittingly.

What could be a destination for a lost, when there is no will to move on anymore?

Law is nothing else but the best reason of wise men applied for ages to the transactions and business of mankind.

All men are children, and if you understand that, a woman understands everything.

It takes something of a poet to apprehend and get into the depth, the lusciousness, the spiritual life of a great poem. And so we must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is.

No historian should be trusted implicitly.

We are apt to believe in Providence so long as we have our own way; but if things go awry, then we think, if there is a God, he is in heaven, and not on earth.

If we truly want to be tools in the hands of our Heavenly Father in bringing to pass His eternal purposes, we need only to be a friend.

Thinking is a social process. I talk to everyone from children to anthropologists and philosophers. I try my ideas out on people and they talk back to you. That's how ideas get formed.

The world is about the way in which our dreams intersect with our real life. Endlessly, the world of the imagination changes the world.