Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We can have justice whenever those who have not been injured by injustice are as outraged by it as those who have been.
It is hard to say whether doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery.
A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.
Do not trouble yourself for your brethren, for we have already provided lands for them, which they shall possess forever.
Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people.
Fools you are. To say you learn by your experience. I prefer to profit by others' mistakes and avoid the price of my own.
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.
Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
The question then will be, whether a consolidated government can preserve the freedom and secure the rights of the people.
Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.
This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
Memmius would only be useless to him for a short time, but that he would remain useless to himself and the Republic forever.
That city in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
Happiness and Prosperity are now within our Reach; but to attain and preserve them must depend upon our own Wisdom and Virtue.
Without accepting the other person's thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other's help to get results.
Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.
With bad laws and good civil servants it's still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can't help.
The obligation of the state is to guarantee freedom of religion, and that implies dealing with all of them on an equal footing.
Laws are like spiders webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape.
When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.
True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.
If a nation does not want a monarchy, change the nation's mind. If a nation does not need a monarchy, change the nation's needs.
This policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches, and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron.
A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.
No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives.
Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings.
Perhaps it is God's will to lead the people of South Africa through defeat and humiliation to a better future and a brighter day.
When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
For then only will you be strong, when you cherish the laws, and when the revolutionary attempts of lawless men shall have ceased.
Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting.
Revolutions in Prussia are started by kings, and since it is a revolution, it is better to start it ourselves than to suffer of it
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
The Americans are a very lucky people. They're bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors, and to the east and west by fish.
I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.
The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous excess, a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States.
If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
What we can do as individuals may not be very much on the global scale, but we have to start the change by living as we are teaching.
Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.
All power is lodged in, and consequently derived from, the people. We should wear it as a breastplate, and buckle it on as our armour.
The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.