We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents

History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.