I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.

Religion, to have any force upon men's understandings,--indeed, to exist at all,--must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance upon any human institution, else it would be the absurdest thing in the world,--an acknowledged cheat.

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

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.