“The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.”

At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.

Trade is the best cure for prejudice.

It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.

In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Virtue has needs of limits.

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.