“In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.”

We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

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.

Republicans are as capable of coming up with great ideas and moving this country along as anyone – they just don’t do it.

If Republicans eliminate Medicare, America will become a country in which you can never retire – and once you physically can no longer work, you are desperately poor until you die.

Mad was wide open. Bill loved it, and he was a capitalist Republican. I loved it, and I was a liberal Democrat.

Net neutrality isn’t a government takeover of the Internet, as many of my Republican colleagues have alleged.

The Republican agenda is a radical vision in which Medicaid is slashed to the bone – in which we start to balance the budget on the backs of, literally, our most vulnerable citizens.

Obamacare is a private mandate that will drive billions to the insurance industry, much like the auto insurance mandate.

This is a brand new day for the Illinois Republican Party.

We need Democrats and Republicans in Congress to work together to fashion a very comprehensive pushback to Russia, not just the cyber-hacking, but their bribery of officials in Europe, their social media campaign, their overt media campaign.