“Everything yields to diligence”

“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.” 

“When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.” 

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. --”

“The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.”

“A government which can be felt; a government of energy. God send that our country may never have a government, which it can feel.”

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

“the measure of society is how it treats the weakest members”

“I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”

“Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.”

“Courts love the people always, as wolves do the sheep”

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

“New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.”

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

“Kejujuran merupakan suatu kebijakan dalam bisnis, yang tidak perlu diubah atau disesuaikan dengan waktu.”