Montesquieu

“ They make armies fly like cranes, and overturn walls like a house of cards; they have bridges on all the rivers, secret paths in all the mountains, immense arsenals in burning deserts; they lack nothing but common sense. ”

“ Confusion reigns at all our meetings; and state affairs are not so thoroughly discussed as before: our young folks live without the slightest regard for their elders, and without any discipline among themselves: it is exactly like the council of Rehoboam, where the young overbore the old. We point out to them in vain that we were in peaceable possession of the Tuileries twenty years before they were born: I believe they will at last drive us out ”

“ Hardly have they exhausted the present when they plunge into the future, and stealing a march on Providence, anticipate it in all its dealings with men. They take a general in hand, and after having praised him for a thousand follies which he has not committed, they prepare for him a thousand others which also will never come to pass. ”