Quote collection
492 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature."
"Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled."
"True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues."
"The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality."
"The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves."
"For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew."
"Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part."
"Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation."
"The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great."
"The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions."
"By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little."
"Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment."
"Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition."
"The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity."
"As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain."
"The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them."
"The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear."
"Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together."
"Freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind; man's right to freedom being in exact proportion to his willingness to put chains upon his own appetites; the less restraint from within, the more must be imposed from without."
"It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact."