“Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.”

But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power….

If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.

When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.

In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.

Nowadays Christians appear to treat prayer as a means to accomplish their aims and ideas. If they possessed just a little deeper understanding, they would recognize that prayer is but man uttering to God what is God’s will.

Women always left me because I wouldn’t commit, but then nothing changes a relationship like commitment. If you move in with someone, you lose all respect for them.