“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”

“No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country”

“The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural.”

“In democratic society each citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty object, which is himself.”

“History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.”

“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

“Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.”