Society should be constructed as you erect a house; not from the roof down, but from the foundation upwards." "Admitting, however, that your house has been badly constructed at first, in repairing it, would you tear away the walls at random, at the risk of bringing all down about your ears ?" "I would first see that sufficient props were reared, and then proceed with vigor, though always with caution.

Courage in such an experiment is less to be dreaded than timidity.

Half the evils of life, social, personal and political, are as much the effects of moral cowardice as of fraud." I then told the brigadier, that as his countrymen rejected the inducements of property in the selection of the political base of their social compact, I expected to find a capital substitute in virtue.
"I have always heard that virtue is the great essential of a free people, and doubtless you Leaplowers are perfect models in this important particular ?" The brigadier smiled before he answered me, first looking about to the right and left, as if to regale himself with the odor of perfection.
"Many theories have been broached on these subjects," he replied, "in which there has been some confusion between cause and effect.

Virtue is no more a cause of freedom, except as it is connected with intelligence, than vice is a cause of slavery.

Both may be consequences, but it is not easy to say how either is necessarily a cause.