History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.

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

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old; but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?

For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.