Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees.

No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'

I didn't grow up imagining myself as an opera composer. Only once in my entire adolescence did I attend an opera. I went and saw Aida at the old Met, didn't understand a thing about it, and thought it was pretty awful. But I think I had it in my genes without even realising it.

I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it [law of nature], as a resource to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware.

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

We are in the the very midst of a revolution, the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.

A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.