Public calamity is a mighty leveller.

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.

The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.

The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.