“It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.”

“One of the commonest weaknesses of human intelligence is the wish to reconcile opposing principles and to purchase harmony at the expense of logic.”

“One's love for despotism is in exact proportion to one's contempt for one's country.”

“Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”

“The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.”

“Now I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; every citizen must be put in possession of his rights, or rights must be granted to no one.”

“I am unacquainted with a more deplorable spectacle than that of a people unable either to defend or to maintain its independence.”

“No form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.”

“Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.”

“The Revolution in the United States was produced by a mature and thoughtful taste for liberty, and not by a vague and undefined instinct for independence.”

“Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.”

“A central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit. If such an administration succeeds in convincing all the disposable resources of a people, it impairs at least the renewal of those resources.”

“If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.”

“He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always i a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.”

“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.”

“Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.”

“It is the civil jury that really saved the liberties of England.”

“But a democracy can only obtain truth as the result of experience, and many nations may forfeit their existence whilst they are awaiting the consequences of their errors.”

“There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal.”

“I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people.”

“It had been supposed, until our time, that despotism was odious, under whatever form it appeared. But it is a discovery of modern days that there are such things as legitimate tyranny and holy injustice, provided they are exercised in the name of the people.”

“The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners.”

“Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.”

“A whole nation cannot rise above itself.”

“In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.”

“I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men.”

“In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.”

“I am of opinion, that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us, individual independence and local liberties will ever be the produce of artificial contrivance; that centralization will be the natural form of government.”

“In the States of New England, from the first, the condition of the poor was provided for;”

“In the township, as well as everywhere else, the people is the only source of power; but in no stage of government does the body of citizens exercise a more immediate influence.”

“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”

“A depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”

“However enlightened and however skilful a central power may be, it cannot of itself embrace all the details of the existence of a great nation.”

“the advantage of democracy is not, as has been sometimes asserted, that it protects the interests of the whole community, but simply that it protects those of the majority.”

“Amongst civilized nations revolts are rarely excited, except by such persons as have nothing to lose by them;”

“Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.”

“It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.”

“Jefferson went still further, and he introduced a maxim into the policy of the Union, which affirms that "the Americans ought never to solicit any privileges from foreign nations, in order not to be obliged to grant similar privileges themselves.”

“The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.”

“Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants, and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone, and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”

“Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.”

“Thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate the traces of its existence.”

“While he loved liberty, he detested the crimes that had been committed in its name. Jon J. Ingalls”

“In other words, the government of the democracy is the only one under which the power which lays on taxes escapes the payment of them.”

“Although the vast country which we have been describing was inhabited by many indigenous tribes, it may justly be said at the time of its discovery by Europeans to have formed one great desert. The Indians occupied without possessing it.”

“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.”

“The passion for war is so intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so injurious to the welfare of the State, that a man does not consider himself honored in defending it, at the risk of his life.”

“The Indians had only the two alternatives of war or civilization; in other words, they must either have destroyed the Europeans or become their equals.”

“am unacquainted with His designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than His justice.”

“Theatre is the most democratic side of literature.”