Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.

A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.