In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.

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

He [Napoleon] was as great as a man can be without morality.

By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.

When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones; few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket.

What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.