“I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too. ”

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

“[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.”

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”

“On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

“The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk. But divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.”

“We seem not to perceive that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another.”

“A Man's management of his own purse speaks volumes about character”

“If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” 

“A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.”

“Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”

“The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory.”

“I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then, to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punished him who gives in to it. And it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”