The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.

Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.

Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.

Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word.

In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food

No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.