“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.”

“The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. . . . Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit. . . .”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

“Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.”

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”

“It is generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles and design.”

“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”