The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.

Progress, the religion of those who have none.

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

The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.

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.

That great political idea, sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God, teaching men to treasure the liberties of others as their own and to defend them for the love of justice and charity more than as a claim of right, has been the soul of what is great and good in the progress of the last two hundred years.

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