Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.

Co-operation, like other difficult things, can be learned only by practice: and to be capable of it in great things, a people must be gradually trained to it in small. Now the whole course of advancing civilization is a series of such training.

It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.

The bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good.

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

A person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse.

I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is.