Society and the World

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.

Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though for but one year, can never willingly abandon it.

A man that could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hand.

Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the gates of heaven.

Hanging is too good for him, said Mr Cruelty.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest.