quotes from classic

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

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Fear is the foundation of most governments.

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I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.

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There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

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Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.

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When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

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While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.

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I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

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Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

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Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.

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Genius is sorrow's child.

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Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

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I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

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A government of laws, and not of men.

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The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.

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My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

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The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

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Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

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The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.

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