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It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.

A President may sense and proclaim that new spirit, but only a people can provide it.

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative opinions or in different views of administrative policy are in their nature transitory.

There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.

For the first time in our history the person elected to the Vice-Presidency of the United States, by the happening of a contingency provided for in the Constitution, has had devolved upon him the Presidential office.

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

Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.

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.

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.

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

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.

A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc.

Presidential powers are not fixed but fluctuate, depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress.

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.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy

Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make

war takes away the easy supply of daily wants, and so proves a rough master, that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes

The power of one person — Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.

It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have intrusted power.

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.