Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
Education is the cheap defense of nations.
Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
The march of the human mind is slow.
We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.
The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.
To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty.
Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.
I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.
Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.
Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.
An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror.