Every religious party, however exclusive or servile its theory may be, if it is in contradiction with a system generally accepted and protected by law, must necessarily, at its first appearance, assume the protection of the idea that the conscience is free. Before a new authority can be set up in the place of one that exists, there is an interval when the right of dissent must be proclaimed.
The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.
By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
The inflexible integrity of the moral code is, to me, the secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of history.
Every man should be considered as having a right to the character which he deserves; that is, to be spoken of according to his actions.
To force men to dig wells by prohibiting them from taking water from the brook is to increase their useless labor, but not their wealth.
[T]he kind of dependence that results from exchange, from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent on the foreigner without the foreigner being dependent on us. Now, this is the very essence of society. To break up natural relations is not to place ourselves in a state of independence, but in a state of isolation.
Our theory is so little opposed to practice that it is nothing else but practice explained.
Road-makers and Obstructives working together on the most friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavoring to clear the road, and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassable.