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

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.

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix

Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.

The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.

When I treat other people with kindness and love, it is part of my way of paying my debt to God and the world for the privilege of living on this planet.

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.

Medical debts are the number-one cause of bankruptcy in America.

No one should be incarcerated for debt or squeezed for money they have no chance of getting their hands on.

Refinancing doesn’t reduce your debt, it just restructures it, so be clear about what you want to achieve with a refi.

Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

The economy needs a stimulus. We MUST borrow. The notion of debt as a sin or something evil should be reviewed.

Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.