There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.
American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.
Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.
The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.
