A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.

Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.

But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.

I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.

The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing; but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.