“The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded.”

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.

Every class is unfit to govern.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.