Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

The march of the human mind is slow.

We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.

The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.