Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?

In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.

Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature; they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.