Every class is unfit to govern.
Absolute power demoralizes.
Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.
Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.
The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.
Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience.
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.
Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.
From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.
Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.
The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
The mills of God grind slowly.
The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.