Quotes About Government

As a portrait should be like the person portrayed, so should a representative House be like the people whom it represents. Nor in arranging a franchise does it seem to me that we have a right to regard any other view. If a country be unfit for representative

Your policy should be to keep your government together by a strong majority. After all, the making of new laws is too often but an unfortunate necessity laid on us by the impatience of the people. A lengthened period of quiet and therefore good government with a minimum of new laws would be the greatest benefit the country could receive.

At some point the conscience of King George III, a decent, amiable, certainly not intolerant man, with good Catholic friends and compassionate towards unfortunate Catholic refugees, found itself stirred into a frenzy by the prospect of allowing these same Catholic friends and their children to participate in any way in the government of the country

In the meantime, the question could not even be discussed in the Cabinet, by agreement of the Prime Minister with the King.

Neither the Lord Chancellor specifically nor, by implication, the Prime Minister could be Roman Catholics. The latter would be precluded by the clause which forbade any Catholic to advise on ecclesiastical appointments, a duty which comes to the Prime Minister of a country in which there is an officially Established Church.

Catholic priests could not be Members of Parliament.

Tyrannies have long lists of rights. What they do not have is structural restraints on the power of government.

The immune system, the hypothalamus, the ventro-medial frontal cortices, and the Bill of Rights have the same root cause.

The ultimate paradox of the liberal Republic represented by its government was that it did not dare defend itself from its own army by giving weapons to the workers who had elected it.

Aussi, dans la démocratie, les pauvres sont-ils souverains à l'exclusion des riches, parce qu'ils sont les plus nombreux, et que l'avis de la majorité fait loi. Voilà donc un des caractères distinctifs de la liberté ; et les partisans de la démocratie ne manquent pas d'en faire une condition indispensable de l'État.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.

Man is by nature a political animal.

When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.

The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.

Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.

Man is a political animal. A man who lives alone is either a Beast or a God

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. & It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.

governments, which have a regard to the common interest, are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.

The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.

He who is a citizen in a democracy will often not be a citizen in an oligarchy.

It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election. -- Aristotle, Politics, Book IV