A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?

A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

All government — indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter.

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.