The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.
The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.
Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.
What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security.
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
