The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

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

The world belongs to those with the most energy.

Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.

General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.

The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.