Edmund Burke: “In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants to be the only men qualified for great affairs.”

In all this procedure I can discern neither the solid sense of plain dealing nor the subtle dexterity of ingenious fraud.

Never did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the confiscations of the citizens.

They rob only to enable them to cheat; but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes, which blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception.

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.