When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.

Hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.

People get into the habit of entrusting the things they desire to wishful thinking, and subjecting things they don't desire to exhaustive thinking

They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger.

Men's indignation, it seems, is more exited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.