Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality.

To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes.

Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.