Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.

Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.