A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.