Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival.

A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?

What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.