Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably interposed.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate -- to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.