A powerful, victorious ally is yet another name for master.

Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities.

Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.

As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in god and hate a saint.

In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

The honor of a nation is its life. Deliberately to abandon it is to commit an act of political suicide.

These are not vague inferences . . . but they are solid conclusions drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.