For a very long time, and among a large number of peoples, political power has belonged to the owners of the land.

The liberals who demanded equality of taxation on behalf of the poor, for instance, did not imagine that they would obtain progressive taxation to the disadvantage of the well-off, and that they would end up with an arrangement in which taxes are voted by those who do not pay them.

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.

Theories of "natural law" and the "law of nations" are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. [...] "Natural law" is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves[....]

It is a know fact that almost all revolutions have been the work, not of the common people, but of the aristocracy, and especially of the decayed part of the aristocracy.

The intent of sincere humanitarians is to do good to society, just as the intent of the child who kills a bird by to much fondling is to do good to the bird.

Increase in the wealth per capita fosters democracy; but the latter, at least according to what we have been able to observe up to now, entails great destruction of wealth and even eventually dries up the sources of it. Hence it is its own grave-digger, it destroys what gave it birth.