It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.

A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.

No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.

Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.

The common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts; they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is proverbial; if anything rocks at all, they say it rocks like a cradle; and in this way they go on.

As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.