Property is desirable as the ground work of moral independence, as a means of improving the faculties, and of doing good to others, and as the agent in all that distinguishes the civilized man from the savage.

There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit with the same courage that he faces his foes.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

Contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed.

There are evils worse than death.

The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.

If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property; if we have property, we must have its rights; if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.