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 incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.

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.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.

Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.

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