GEORGE BANCROFT

The public is wiser than the wisest critic.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

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.

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.

Avarice is the vice of declining years.

Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.

If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

There is more danger from monopolies than from combinations of workingmen [unions.]

Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain little respect.

the need for I never doubted Captain Levy's competence but there was a strong prejudice in the service against Captain Levy which seemed to me, in considerable part attributable to his being of the Jewish persuasion .... [but there was] the need for harmonious cooperation which is essential to the highest effectiveness.

The public happiness is the true object of legislation, and can be secured only by the masses of mankind themselves awakening to the knowledge and the care of their own interests.

The best government rests … on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.

Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle.

Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.

By common consent grey hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are blindly adopted; the second wilfully preferred.

The unchanging character of law is the only basis on which continuous action can rest. Without it man would be but as the traveler over endless morasses; the builder on quicksands; the mariner without compass or rudder, driven successively whithersoever changing winds may blow

Style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world.

If hours did not hang heavy, what would become of scandal?

It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.

In 1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how to recover her liberties, they were restored by men of the United Provinces.