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Now military governments, established for an indefinite period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent, would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection.

For them all is suspicion and anxiety; for them there is no possibility of friendship.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex

An armed disciplined body is, in its essence, dangerous to liberty; undisciplined, it is ruinous to society.

Let it be impressed upon all hearts that, beautiful as our fabric is, no earthly power or wisdom could ever reunite its broken fragments.

The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.

Our whole system of self-government will crumble either if officials elect what laws they will enforce or citizens elect what laws they will support.

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative opinions or in different views of administrative policy are in their nature transitory.

Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.

Here we see how hurtful it is for a prince or commonwealth to keep the minds of their subjects in constant alarm and suspense by continually renewed punishments and violence.

Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy

It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have intrusted power.

The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.

It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union.

Such increase is destined to keep pace with the growth of our population, until, without a figure of speech, an army of officeholders may be spread over the land.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

This danger is greatly heightened, as it has been always observable that men are less jealous of encroachments of one department upon another than upon their own reserved rights.

Otherwise, free speech which is the strength of the Nation will be the cause of its destruction.