“Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.”

I like to see your eyes praise me and, during such recitals, there are interruptions, not ungrateful to the heart, when the honey that drops from the lips is not merely words.

They who pass their whole lives in working for their daily bread, have no ideas beyond their business or their interest, and all their understanding seems to lie in their fingers ends.

I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.

Taxes on the very necessaries of life, enable an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with stupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade which costs them so dear.

It appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground.

But let me now stop; I may be a little partial, and view every thing with the jaundiced eye of melancholy – for I am sad – and have cause.

Soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste are almost synonymous with the epithets of weakness, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue.

Happy would it be for women, if they were only flattered by the men who loved them; I mean, who love the individual, not the sex.

In short, women, in general, as well as the rich of both sexes, have acquired all the follies and vices of civilization, and missed the useful fruit.

Without the aid of the imagination all the pleasures of the senses must sink into grossness.

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

Either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the world is not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized.

I like to use significant words.

I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial.

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed – my dearest pleasure when free.

Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify our desire for knowledge than our best-laid plans.

Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.

Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it – there is a certain shameful solidarity.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren’t for the government.

Government is the people’s business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.

Collective solutions to individual problems is very seductive. It’s how Obama gets elected, by the way.

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

I’m eternally grateful to fate and the citizens of Russia that they’ve trusted me to be the head of the Russian government.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.