Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.

I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself

Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.

Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

They who love to inform themselves, are never idle. Though I have no business of consequence to take care of, I am nevertheless continually employed. I spend my life in examining things: I write down in the evening whatever I have remarked, what I have seen, and what I have heard in the day: every thing engages my attention, and every thing excites my wonder: I am like an infant, whose organs, as yet tender, are strongly affected by the slightest objects.

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.