Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little.

To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.

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

Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.