Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.

In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food

It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned,-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.