There is a hearty Puritanism in the view of human nature which pervades the instrument of 1787. It is the work of men who believed in original sin, and were resolved to leave open for transgressors no door which they could possibly shut.

I have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense.

In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid Nature.

The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies.

Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom, have been deemed by Americans not only as their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive possessions.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

The People, though we think of a great entity when we use the word, means nothing more than so many millions of individual men.