Occupation: Former United States Representative Birth: April 9, 1758 Death: July 4, 1808
I have heard it remarked that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion they have not reasoned themselves into..
Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on th….
The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them b….
[Why] should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for….
Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism..
Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble....In no Book is ther….
[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a de….
[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than ….
Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the kee….
A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the ….
The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality..
We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the pol….
A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, ….
The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty..
The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people..
No man can be a sound lawyer in this land who is not well read in the ethics of Moses and the virtues of Jesus..
Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint fr….
I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stal….
The gentleman puts me in mind of an old hen which persists in setting after her eggs are taken away..
A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way..
No one ever became, or can become truly eloquent without being a reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language..