Benjamin Constant

“Political liberty is the guarantee of individual liberty.”

“Woe to the man who in the first moments of a love affair does not believe that it will last forever!”

“Individuality is the aim of human existence.”

“The will of an entire people cannot make just what is unjust.”

“The liberty of the individual is the object of all human association; on it rest public and private morality; on it are based the calculations of industry and commerce, and without it there is neither peace, dignity, nor happiness for men.”

“The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him.”

“The press is the only institution that can enable the public to control the government.”

“Commerce has brought nations closer together and given them customs and habits which are almost identical.”

“War is anterior to commerce; for war and commerce are only two different means of arriving at the same armed end, that of possessing what one desires.”

“We are so much accustomed to the sight of crime that we have lost our sense of its horror.”

“It is not for the right to participate in political power that the moderns will thank you; it is for individual liberty.”

“For the ancients the citizen was everything, the individual nothing.”

“The danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence, and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we should surrender our right to share in political power too easily.”

“Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.”

“By liberty I mean the triumph of individuality, as much over the authority that would presume to govern by despotism as over the masses who claim the right to make a minority subservient to a majority.”