“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

There should be a law to the People besides its own will.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.

The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.

. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free.

The minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.

In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food.

Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.

Socialism means slavery.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

When the State is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.

No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.

Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt

Corruptisima republica plurimae leges.

In all things there is a kind of law of cycles. [Lat., Rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis.]

The injustice of a government is proportional to the number of its laws.