“The minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.”

Great men are almost always bad men.

False principles, which correspond with the bad as well as with the just aspirations of mankind, are a normal and necessary element in the social life of nations.

There are many things the government cant do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.

Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.

A convinced man differs from a prejudiced man as an honest man from a liar.

I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.

Progress, the religion of those who have none.

Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate.

The mills of God grind slowly.

In every age its (liberty’s) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food

A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race

The more you go, the more will the place please you, if it be worth your attention. Give heed to the appearance of the neighbourhood.

Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

When I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles.

Girls have that wonderful thing where they try to throw each other off, not wanting to appear too eager.

This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the earth.

Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena.

But that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.