Society and the World

Society is indeed a contract … it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

This barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Every human benefit, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tells me I ought to do.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tells me I ought to do.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact; and great trade will always be attended with considerable abuses.

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.