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Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.
The great end of justice is to substitute the notion of right for that of violence, and to place a legal barrier between the power of the government and the use of physical force.
if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent men or bad citizens, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.
The existence of democracies is threatened by two dangers, viz., the complete subjection of the legislative body to the caprices of the electoral body, and the concentration of all the powers of the Government in the legislative authority.
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing; human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion,
in democracies the members of the legal profession and the magistrates constitute the only aristocratic body which can check the irregularities of the people.
Too much importance is attributed to legislation, too little to manners.
The weak generally mistrust the justice and the reason of the strong.
