“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
“If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.”
“Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.”
“A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.”
“Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.”
“Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.”
“A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.”
“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”
“It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.”
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
“All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”
“If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.”
“Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners.”
“Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”
“The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.”
“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.”
“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations -- wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”
“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 instruments, not the guides, of the people.”
“Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.”
“The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candor of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds.”
“In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.”
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.”
“Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.”
“Patience will achieve more than force.”
“Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.”
“Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.”