Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.

Bills of attainder, ex-post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.

In republican government the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this . . . is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?