“Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.”

To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it.

Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

In the matter of dress one should always keep below one’s ability.

That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.

It is unreasonable … to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself.

Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?

The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.

Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government–a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave.

Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children.