The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.

The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.

People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.

When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.

Law is justice. In this proposition a simple and enduring government can be conceived. And I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice.

By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.

There is not a tool, an implement, or a machine that has not resulted in a decrease in the contribution of human labor. Labor is not made permanently idle [though]; when replaced in one special category... it turns its attack against other obstacles on the main road to progress.