There is no greater guilt than the unneccessary war.
People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.
Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people.
Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.
Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.
I drink no cider, but feast on Philadelphia beer.
We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!
Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart.
The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.
The only way to form an army to be confided in, was a systematic discipline, by which means all men may be made heroes.
The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
Yesterday, the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that those United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.
July 4th ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion.
We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.
As long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families. As long as Marriage exists, Knowledge, Property and Influence will accumulate in Families.
A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.
We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.