From the public-domain record · 81,371 quotes
Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
I readily admit (indeed, I should lay it down as a fundamental principle) that in a republican government, which has a democratic basis, the rich do require an additional security above what is necessary to them in monarchies.
An individual is not of the same importance in a mass represented by a few as in a mass represented by many.
It is easy to perceive, by the course of their reasonings, how much they were embarrassed by their contradictory ideas of the rights of men and the privileges of riches.
A principle totally different from the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is thereby admitted: but no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it is subverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to…
In all this process, which in its fundamental elements affects to consider only population, upon a principle of natural right, there is a manifest attention to property,--which, however just and reasonable on other schemes, is on theirs…
Of all these qualifying barriers we must think alike: that they are impotent to secure independence, strong only to destroy the rights of men.
With regard to the person who cannot come up to your market, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against him, is established at the very outset, by you who pretend to be its sworn foe.
You order him to buy the right which you before told him Nature had given to him gratuitously at his birth, and of which no authority on earth could lawfully deprive him.
The means taught by experience may be better suited to political ends than those contrived in the original project.
In them we often see the end best obtained, where the means seem not perfectly reconcilable to what we may fancy was the original scheme.
If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest.
Some very unusual appearances of wisdom ought to display themselves on the face of the designs of those who appeal to no practice and who copy after no model.
But the physician of the state, who, not satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to regenerate constitutions, ought to show uncommon powers.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
I believe, that, were Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars, who in their paradoxes are servile imitators, and even in their incredulity discover an implicit faith.
By listening only to these, your leaders regard all things only on the side of their vices and faults, and view those vices and faults under every color of exaggeration.
The worst of it is, that this their despair of curing common distempers by regular methods arises not only from defect of comprehension, but, I fear, from some malignity of disposition.
By their violent haste, and their defiance of the process of Nature, they are delivered over blindly to every projector and adventurer, to every alchemist and empiric.
What your politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy genius are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability.
To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a presiding principle and a prolific energy, is with me the criterion of profound wisdom.
If justice requires this, the work itself requires the aid of more minds than one age can furnish.
Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are so deeply to affect them.
