“no people can be both ignorant and free.”

“Take things always by their smooth handle.”

“When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”

“Freedom, the first-born of science.”

“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.” 

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal. Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.”

“If Americans desire to be both ignorant and free, they want what never has been and what never will be.”

“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...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.”

“A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.”

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.”

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms”

“Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.”

“It is the duty of every American citizen to take part in a vigorous debate on the issues of the day.”

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

“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.”