All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.

A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.

Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.

It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.

The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.

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

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