"Is not an hereditary nobility inconsistent with liberty? I will ask more, is it not inconsistent with public virtue? …"

"The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authori…"

"I dare say you marvel sometimes at my independent way of walking through the world just as if nature had made me of y…"

"An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mist…"

"We detect … throughout the whole of things — in the operations of nature, of human society, and in those of our own i…"

"It is not, happily, within our power thus to work destruction in the universal womb of things; still within the spher…"

"I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life."

"From the era which dates the national existence of the American people, dates also a mighty step in the march of huma…"

"Dating, as we justly may, a new era in the history of man from the Fourth of July, 1776, it would be well, that is, i…"

"Another revolution! Naples free and all of Italy in insurrection! How wonderful has been the march of the human mind …"