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.

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

The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.

A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.

Every class is unfit to govern.

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.

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.