The quote database

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

Nevertheless the person in charge never seems to look the impossibility in the face.

In place of the suspicious watchfulness and the more or less open warfare which characterizes the ordinary types of management, there is universally friendly cooperation between the management and the men.

The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.

It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law.

A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer

If parties in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law and duty, at that point their usefulness ends.

Only it seems to me a grievous error in a ruler to quarrel with all his subjects at once.