And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?

We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles.

And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.

Nothing is more senseless than to base so many expectations on the state, that is, to assume the existence of collective wisdom and foresight after taking for granted the existence of individual imbecility and improvidence.

The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.

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.

And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?