249 quotes
A conscientious person would rather doubt his own judgment, than condenm his species.
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)
If your hands are not on your swords, their knives will be at your throats.
The African [slave] trade was, in his opinion, an absolute robbery. It therefore could not be a doubt with the House, whether it was proper to abolish it.
I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
Never wholly separate in your Mind the merits of any Political Question from the Men who are concerned in it.
Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.
Nothing is so fatal to Religion as indifference which is, at least, half Infidelity.
Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)
Nothing less will content me, than whole America.
Good order is the foundation of all good things.
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
They talk as if England were not in Europe.
Habit & Experience should teach all persons their place in Society—a Levelling Principle should be discouraged both with respect to rank, & Superiority of every Kind.
People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.
And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.
Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things particularly suited to a man who has long views, who meditates designs that require time in fashioning, which propose duration when accomplished.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)