We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.

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.

Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.

The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.

To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.