“All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.

Those who attempt to level never equalize.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

You can never plan the future by the past.

Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.

Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it’s yellow.

This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.