Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government.

Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.

Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.

He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power.

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.