The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.

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

Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age.

He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.

Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.