An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.