The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.

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

The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something...

A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.

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.

He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.

The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle,...

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.

troublous storms that tossThe private state, and render life unsweet.”These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts.

Society is indeed a contract. … It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner...

What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in...

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

If ever we should find ourselves disposed not to admire those writers or artists, Livy and Virgil for instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had admired, [we ought] not to follow our...

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they...

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into...

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

Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have...

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.

But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is,...

A representative owes not just his industry but his judgement

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.

Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.

It is generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles and design.

The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.

But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the...