“In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.”

There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.

Give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many.

Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

I always feel how necessary you are to me. But when you are absent, I become still more sensible of it and look around in vain for that satisfaction which you alone can bestow.

Men are reasoning rather than reasonable animals.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

Who talks most about freedom and equality? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?

Nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of Government.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

I never expect a perfect work from an imperfect man.

The masses are asses.

Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses and evils incident to society in every shape?

When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.

I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they

Even if you make mistakes, I go back to those things, my not-so-great moments because those are my truest moments; those are my human moments. I’m not even mad at the things I said that were a little dicey.

I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.

We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.

It’s true Fang and I fight, but we’ve never gone to bed mad. Of course, one year we were up for three months.

All men are mad in some way or the other, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God’s madmen too, the rest of the world.

They made it to the middle class, my dad working as a bartender and my mother as a cashier and a maid. I didn’t inherit any money from them. But I inherited something far better – the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams.