These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured.
A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.
Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.
Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.
The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up.
To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.
The birthday of a new world is at hand.
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.
My mind is my own church.
The right of voting for representatives, is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.