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the liberty of association is become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority

On the other hand, in a State where the citizens are nearly on an equality, it becomes difficult for them to preserve their independence against the aggressions of power.

In the ages of equality all men are independent of each other, isolated and weak.

The loss of liberty, of all good government, of peace, plenty, and happiness, must inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union.

The powers of patronage and rule which would have been exercised, under the President, over a vast and populous and naturally wealthy region are greater than, unless under extreme necessity, I should be willing to intrust to any one man.

This trial comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages.

Let it be impressed upon all hearts that, beautiful as our fabric is, no earthly power or wisdom could ever reunite its broken fragments.

The absolute power of this distant old master had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron, and left me something to brood over after the play and in moments of repose.

The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.

Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war

Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm

it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government

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.

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

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.

This custom of ostracism was not intended as a punishment for crime, but was called, in order to give it a plausible title, a check to excessive power.

Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.

With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.

It is over the lowest class of mankind that government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it operates to the worst effect.

Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments.