Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.

Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.

European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.

There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.

One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.