Quotes About Republics

The fake republics are goners; the monarchies have a fighting chance. That's my conclusion after a short visit to the Middle East and discussions with officials and analysts there.

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Namely, the very values that the American patriots claimed to be fighting for were incompatible with the disciplined culture required in a professional army. Republics were committed to a core principle of consent, while armies were the institutional embodiments of unthinking obedience and routinized coercion. The very idea of a "standing army" struck most members of the Continental Congress and the state legislatures as a highly dangerous threat to republican principles.

So long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to understanding.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.

THOSE WHO STUDY the rise and fall of civilizations learn that no shortcoming has been as surely fatal to republics as a dearth of public virtue, the unwillingness of those who govern to place the value of their society above personal interest.

Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government may remain for a season, the substance has departed forever.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

All the States and Governments by which men are or ever have been ruled, have been and are either Republics or Princedoms.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

As populations grow beyond Dunbar's number, face-to-face contact no longer suffices to maintain political control. At this point, writing supplies the best mechanism for communicating among large numbers of people, and power naturally accrues to the literate. Consequently, societies with high rates of literacy, such as Athens, tend to have more smoothly running republics than those with low rates, such as the late Roman one.

When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

Can you imagine," he went on to say, "what would have been the condition of things eventually if there had been no war, and the South had been allowed to follow its course? Instead of one great, prosperous country with nothing before it but the conquests of peace, a score of petty republics, as in Central and South America, wasting their energies in war with each other pr om revolutions.

of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

Wendell Phillips declared: "Only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.… Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

The freest people, like the freest man, is always in danger of re-lapsing into servitude. Wars are almost always fatal to Republics. They create tyrants, and consolidate their power.

Republics have a longer life and enjoy better fortune than principalities, because they can profit by their greater internal diversity. They are the better able to meet emergencies.

Republics exist as long as the people "adhere to principles and virtue.

The American republics have no standing armies to intimidate a discontented minority; but as no minority has as yet been reduced to declare open war, the necessity of an army has not been felt.