It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it.
An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds.
A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.
Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.
We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.
Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men’s thoughts, to speak other men’s words, to follow other men’s habits.
The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men’s thoughts, to speak other men’s words, to follow other men’s habits.
The splitting of sovereignty into many parts amounts to there being no sovereign.
Custom is the first check on tyranny; that fixed routine of social life at which modern innovations chafe, and by which modern improvement is impeded, is the primitive check on base power.