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.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.

There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.