The quote database

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

in the exercise of this high power, we must be ever on our guard, lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles

The world does not count races and nations that have nothing.

For them all is suspicion and anxiety; for them there is no possibility of friendship.

The thoughtful framers of our Constitution legislated for our country as they found it.

Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful

The many have always been enthralled by the few; and, monsters who have scarcely shown any discernment of human excellence, have tyrannized over thousands of their fellow creatures.

Every corps is a chain of despots, who, submitting and tyrannizing without exercising their reason, become dead weights of vice and folly on the community.

Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long in freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.

The beauty of our system of government consists, and its safety and durability must consist, in avoiding mutual collisions and encroachments and in the regular separate action of all, while each is revolving in its own distinct orbit.

The law is the only sure protection of the weak and the only efficient restraint upon the strong.

there is no surer or more necessary restraint on the violence of an unruly multitude, than the presence of some one whose character and bearing command respect

Wherefore the nature of a multitude is no more to be blamed than the nature of princes, since both equally err when they can do so without regard to consequences.

Here we see how hurtful it is for a prince or commonwealth to keep the minds of their subjects in constant alarm and suspense by continually renewed punishments and violence.

this vice of ingratitude has its source either in avarice or in suspicion

It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.

princes ought to leave affairs of reproach to the management of others, and keep those of grace in their own hands

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

the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion

For equal work equally well performed by a man and by a woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone shall receive a less recompense.

Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.

This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain.

a Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state or of laissez faire

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them

Numa's virtue made him so celebrated that he was judged worthy to be king, Lykurgus' made him so great that he did not care to be king.