Rights of Man

• “When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a phrenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”

• “When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.”

• “The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.”

• “It is the nature of conquest to turn everything upside down.”

• “They began to consider the Aristocracy as a kind of fungus growing out of the corruption of society, that could not be admitted even as a branch of it...”

• “Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage, than any victory with all its expence.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.