Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.

The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.