Quotes About Government

Government has no other end than the preservation of property.

Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society, as to quit everyone his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there, and there only, is a political or civil society. [....] Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men [e.g., Hobbes] is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all.

The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.

Methinks Sir Robert should have carried his Monarchical Power one step higher and satisfied the World, that Princes might eat their Subjects too.

Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.

making laws with penalties of death, and consequently

God; I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other. If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men's souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth.

Whenever law ends, tyranny begins

Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.

the law of the land, which is not to be violated.

Freedom of Men under Government, is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; A Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man.

That all government is absolute monarchy." And the ground he builds on is this, "That no man is born free.

This shows how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of dominions ; and that the increase of lands, and the right of employing of them, is the great art of government: and that prince, who shall be so wise and godlike, as by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of mankind, against the oppression of power and narrowness of party, will quickly be too hard for his neighbours: but this by the by. To return to the argument in hand.

El fin de la ley no es abolir o restringir, sino preservar y ampliar la libertad. Para todos los estados de seres creados, capaces de derecho, donde no hay ley, no hay libertad.

governments must be left again to the old way of being made by contrivance and the consent of men

Le leggi non vegliano sulla verità delle opinioni ma sulla sicurezza e l'integrità di ciascuno e dello Stato.

Freedom, then, is not what sir Robert Filmer tells us, O.A. 55, " a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws :" but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of the society

The great and cheif end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property; to which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting

Kings are above the laws

Though it be ever so plain, that there ought to be government in the world

submission to government be every one's duty

man can never be obliged in conscience to submit to any power, unless he can be satisfied who is the person who has a right to exercise that power over him.