Strong impulses are but another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more good may always be made of an energetic nature, than of an indolent and impassive one.

In proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving them to the government, their desires will turn to repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannizing: while in proportion as all ready initiative and direction resides in the government, and individuals habitually feel and act as under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite for place and power.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone

With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.

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

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.