Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!

Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will.

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.

When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are to be called, will be the same.

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

Learn to think continentally.