“And the quality of good judgement is clearly a form of knowledge and skill, as it is because of knowledge and not because of ignorance that we judge well.”

“The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge.”

“Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.”

“Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.”

“Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not.”

“In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.”

“When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.”

“In the last analysis, my fellow country men, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.”