The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.
Power naturally and necessarily follows property.
It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the protection of the government.
I shall oppose all slavery extension and all increase of slave representation in all places, at all times, under all circumstances, even against all inducements, against all supposed limitations of great interests, against all combinations, against all compromises.
On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like “another morn,” “Risen on mid-noon;” and the sky on which you closed your eye was cloudless.
The States are nations.
If we abide by the principles taught by the Bible, our country will go on prospering.
If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.
I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.
On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.
We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land – nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. That chart is the Constitution.
Let our object be – our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument – not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.
A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.
When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.
Philosophic argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that.
Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.
If the States were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the Convention refused to baptize it by that name.
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have.
How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
There is no happiness, there is no liberty, there is no enjoyment of life, unless a man can say, when he rises in the morning, I shall be subject to the decision of no unwise judge today.
If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will;.