Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

Live both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.

The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

History is not only a particular branch of knowledge, but a particular mode and method of knowledge in other branches.