Great men are almost always bad men.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

That great political idea, sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God, teaching men to treasure the liberties of others as their own and to defend them for the love of justice and charity more than as a claim of right, has been the soul of what is great and good in the progress of the last two hundred years.

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

There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.