“Assaults by fanatics on our safety... does not justify assaults by the government on our freedom!”

“Whenever we are attacked, people are willing to give up someone else's liberties for their own security.”

“Hope may have a positive reputation, but it has a vicious downside. If you have hope, you can be crushed.”

“God is not here to be demanded of, begged from, or criticized. He hands out burdens to those who are strong enough to carry them, and I feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of lining up with the other invalids and asking for mine to be alleviated.”

“She had been so fiercely alive. She had spoken honestly, and lived with an honesty that few could claim to match. She had made the most of every minute she was given. She bargained and rationed and managed the seconds. She burned up the days.”

“It is an old and wise caution, that when our neighbor's house is on fire, we ought to take care of our own. For tho', blessed be God, I live in a government where liberty is well understood, and freely enjoy'd; yet experience has shown us all that bad precedent in one government is soon set up for an authority in another; and therefore I cannot but think it mine, and every honest man's duty that we ought at the same time to be upon our guard against power, wherever we apprehend that it may affect ourselves or our fellow subjects.I should think it my duty, if required, to go to the utmost part of the land, where my service could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon informations, set on foot by the government, to deprive a people of their right to remonstrating (and complaining too) of the arbitrary attempts of men in power.”

“Strange, is it not, how even those of us who scoff at divine intervention will fall to our knees and clasp our hands the moment we realize our futures are defined by uncertainty and hazard. A thoughtful man would never leave his knees. A wise man would never drop to them. In any case, it wasn’t really a prayer, but one does like to follow convention now and then.”