Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.

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.

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

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.