“The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.”

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

“Be polite to all, but intimate with few.”

“All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.”

“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

“I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.”

“Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.”

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” 

“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.”

“All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.”

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”

“...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.”

“The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government.”

“If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”