Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

There should be a law to the People besides its own will.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.

The history of institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away.

The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.