It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.

The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of and protection; and they who cannot provid….

If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of t….

Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a ma….

No right can come by conquest, unless there were a right of making that conquest..

[L]iberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted . . ..

Who will wear a shoe that hurts him, because the shoe-maker tells him 'tis well made?.

Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small..

Swords were given to men, that none might be Slaves, but such as know not how to use them..

Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, i….

Machiavel, discoursing on these matters, finds virtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of liberty, that he thinks….

If his Majesty is resolved to have my head, he may make a whistle of my arse if he pleases..

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed..

Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force..

I will believe in the right of one man to govern a nation despotically when I find a man born unto the world with boots and spurs, and a nation with ….

That is the best Government, which best provides for war..

Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit..

Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty..

For violence or fraud can create no right..

Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of passions and affections... nothing can or ought to be p….

[A]ll popular and well-mixed governments [republics] . . . are ever established by wise and good men, and can never be upheld otherwise than by virtu….