Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.
No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature.
I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many.
I believe that justice is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society.
Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.
Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.
The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.
In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.
It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.
Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
It is unfortunate that the efforts of mankind to recover the freedom of which they have been so long deprived, will be accompanied with violence, with errors, and even with crimes. But while we weep over the means, we must pray for the end.
All power is inherent in the people.
It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.
From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.
The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.
Democrats consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them, therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.
No government can continue good, but under the control of the people.
Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted.
Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.
Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.