Edmund Burke: “Wherever a bribe is given on one hand, there is a balance accruing on the other.”

If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.

I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.

They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.

They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.