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

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 truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.

All government is founded on compromise and banter.

They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

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.