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.

The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.

The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

A rational army would run away.

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

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