Edmund Burke: “May you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue!”

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.

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.

But 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.