On this, the only vital and enduring question involved, Marshall's views were clear and unshakable.

Such attempts ought to be repelled with a decision which shall convince France and the world that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of…

She was able to maintain her independence & must deserve to lose it if she permitted it to be wrested from her.

History, reason, evidence, march through these pages like infantry, cavalry, and artillery going to battle.

The genius of the Constitution, and the opinions of the people of the United States, cannot be overruled by those who administer the Government.

The first duties of a good citizen--Reverence for the Laws and Respect for the Magistracy.

He has raised the American people in their own esteem, and, if the influence of truth and justice, reason and argument is not lost in Europe, he has raised the consideration of the United States in that quarter of the world....

The Alien and Sedition Laws were, they asserted, the beginning of monarchy, the foundation of absolutism.

Indeed, he thought them only "an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the constitution.

If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the…

Any nation, however, may by statute declare an act to be piratical which is not so by the law of nations; and such an act is punishable only by that particular state and not by other governments.

But an act universally recognized as criminal, such as robbery, murder, and the like, "is an offense against the community of nations.

My God! what a situation has our country reached.

Would they abandon their posts as judges, and the interests of millions committed to them, to serve the purposes of a single individual?

To spirited Virginians, only treason itself was worse than the refusal of Wilkinson, thus insulted, to fight.

The present is no moment for precipitancy or a stretch of power--on the contrary the British being prepared for War & we not, a sudden appeal to hostilities will give them a great advantage--...

I may be immured in dungeons, chained, murdered in legal form, but I cannot be humiliated or disgraced.

That this court dares not shrink from its duty is not less true....

The people of this country have not established ... such a fabric of despotism....

Where is it written in the Constitution ... that you may take children from their parents ... & compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it?...

Such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution.

His devotion to his wife illustrates his attitude toward women in general, which was one of exalted reverence and admiration.

The defects of our system of government must be remedied, not by the judiciary, but by the sovereign power of the people. (Judge William H.

The purpose of his life was to strengthen and enlarge the powers of the National Government; to coördinate into harmonious operation its various departments; and to make it in fact, as well as in principle, the agent of a people…

Our children see this and learn to imitate it....