Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.

Communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.

People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.

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

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—­democracy to many.

That sweet bondage which is freedom’s self.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.