It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment

On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct.

If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.

That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.