The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.
Category Archive: George Bancroft
Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.
Avarice is the vice of declining years.
The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.
In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person.
Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.
By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.
If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.
Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.
The public is wiser than the wisest critic.