"The operations of the executive power are generally for the public good, and when they are not, they are generally checked by the Legislature."

"I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."

"The commerce of slaves in the West Indies, I am informed, is an open market of human flesh, where the unhappy victims are daily exposed to the highest bidder, and where the most sacred ties of nature …"

"The natural right of a man to impart his ideas to others is as sacred as his right to think at all."

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind."