Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority...

Liberty is the prevention of control by others.

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

Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

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.

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