At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.

Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.

If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.

Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned,-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate. But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power....When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.