It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.

Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.

Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.