It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
The effect of liberty on individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations.
Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents...
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival.
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
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.
The wisdom of our ancestors.
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. Those who know what virtuous liberty...
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
You can never plan the future by the past.
History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve taken together would be my standard of a statesman.
It is generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles and design.