Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.

Democracy does not race, it reaches the finish slowly but surely.

Conscience is the virtue of the observers not the agents of action

With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

The coward only threatens when he is safe.

It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.