Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear from thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals.

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.