When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty.

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

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.

Certain kinds of foolishness are such that a greater foolishness would be better.

No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.

The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality... are felt.

The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.