A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom

Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

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

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.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.