When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic period is the taste that all men have for easy success and present enjoyment. This occurs in the pursuits of the intellect as well as in others.

I have an intellectual inclination for democratic institutions, but I am instinctively an aristocrat, which means that I despise and fear the masses. I passionately love liberty, legality, the respect for rights, but not democracy....liberty is my foremost passion. That is the truth.

As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment (p. 290).

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.