The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
Those who attempt to level never equalize.
There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.
I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
Evil succeeds when good men do nothing.
To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
It is hard to say whether doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery.
It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them.
Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.
War never leaves where it found a nation.
Public calamity is a mighty leveller.
In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.
A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.