A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.

Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.