We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.

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.

A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; ... This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France.

To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.

Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.