Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels...I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power.

When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...

A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.

But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.