The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.

The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.

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.

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.

He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.

Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot.