Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.
There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country.
Society is indeed a contract ... it becomes a participant not only between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
It is hard to say whether the doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery.
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
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.