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 ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.

In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.