The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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

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

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

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.