“Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.”

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse’s breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature’s laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages.

I can’t read in a car, because I’ll get sick. It’s almost instant.

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

Some say an army of horsemen, or infantry, A fleet of ships is the fairest thing On the face of the black earth, but I say It’s what one loves.

A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time.

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

Stop giving your infant heart/ wrapped in blind vows/ white lies/ and a haunted past/ stop asking for love/ if you don’t know how to give any/ stop hurting others/ stop it/ stop it/ just fucking stop it.