Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

I have always thought that in revolutions, especially democratic revolutions, madmen, not those so called by courtesy, but genuine madmen, have played a very considerable political part. One thing is certain, and that is that a condition of semi-madness is not unbecoming at such times, and often even leads to success.

Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.

The taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic times.

The main evil of the present democratic institutions of the united states does not raise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.

When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.

Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.

Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?

No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.

No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.

The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.

Nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.

While he loved liberty, he detested the crimes that had been committed in its name. Jon J. Ingalls.

Durability is one of the chief elements of strength. Nothing is either loved or feared but that which is likely to endure.