Quotes About Government

The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are both to be reckoned among their rights.

Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep,—to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy,—to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.

To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience: and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.

There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.

timid piety, which utterly disqualifies for government;

Who but a tyrant (a name expressive of every thing which can vitiate and degrade human nature) could think of seizing on the property of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions, by hundreds and thousands together?

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.

I readily admit (indeed I should lay it down as a fundamental principle) that in a republican government, which has a democratic basis, the rich do require an additional security above what is necessary to them in monarchies. They are subject to envy, and through envy to oppression.

The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution.

An autocrat's a ruler that does what th' people wants an' takes th' blame f'r it.

a bill banning railroad rebates to large industrial companies

Dealing with a government with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult matter

It is not22 a good thing for a country to have a professional yodeler, a human trombone like Mr. Bryan as secretary of state, nor a college president with an astute and shifty mind, a hypocritical ability to deceive plain people … and no real knowledge or wisdom concerning internal and international affairs as head of the nation.

Most of the members are positively corrupt, and the others are really singularly incompetent.

Unless wealth was chastened by culture or regulated by government, it was at worst predatory, at best boring.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere.

There may be honest differences of opinion as to many government policies; but surely there can be no such differences as to the need of unflinching perseverance in the war against successful dishonesty.

This isn't a banana republic. You can't pull strings in America, pay off an official, lean on your cousin. It's not like France or Spain – those banana republics.

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

Under a democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude.

It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated.

Once the monarchy was abolished, a decree was passed that there would be no more kings in Rome.

The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government.