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In the state of nature...all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.

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Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

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Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed.

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Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.

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There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.

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Falsehood often lurks upon the tongue of him, who, by self-praise, seeks to enhance his value in the eyes of others.

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Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

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Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil and still more the man who is indifferent to everything.

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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

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Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.

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