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How mighty, as to the outward, is that Power by which they are borne down, and oppressed!

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.

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

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

Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity. Pride is the burden of a foolish person.

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.

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

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

When the world was over run with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue.

Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery.

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.