Quotes About Citizens

I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people.

In the township, as well as everywhere else, the people is the only source of power; but in no stage of government does the body of citizens exercise a more immediate influence.

In other words, the government of the democracy is the only one under which the power which lays on taxes escapes the payment of them.

The American learns about the law by participating in the making of it. He teaches himself about the forms of government by governing. He watches the great work of society being done every day before his eyes and, in a sense, by his hand. In the United States, all of education is directed toward politics. In Europe, its principal purpose is to prepare people for private life. Citizens take part in public affairs too seldom to prepare them for it in advance.

The Americans live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This

Os costumes, cuja excelência torna o governo quase inútil e cuja corrupção o torna quase impossível.

The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less glorious, and perhaps less strong; but the majority of the citizens will enjoy a greater degree of prosperity, and the people will remain quiet, not because it despairs of amelioration, but because it is conscious of the advantages of its condition.

The States in which the citizens have enjoyed their rights longest are those in which they make the best use of them.

In cases of invasion or insurrection, if the town-officers neglect to furnish the necessary stores and ammunition for the militia, the township may be condemned to a fine of from $200 to $500. It may readily be imagined that in such a case it might happen that no one cared to prosecute; hence the law adds that all the citizens may indict offences of this kind, and that half of the fine shall belong to the plaintiff. See Act of March 6, 1810, vol. ii. p. 236.

Nowhere do citizens seem more insignificant than in a democratic nation.

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage. The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the minority, because an aristocracy, by its very nature, constitutes a minority.

if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent men or bad citizens, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.

Democratic nations often hate those in whose hands the central power is vested; but they love that power itself.

Democratic nations often hate those in whose hands the central power is vested; but they always love that power itself.

In order that society should exist, and a fortiori, that a society should prosper, it is required that all the minds of the citizens should be rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas...

At each instant citizens fall under the control of the public administration; they are brought insensibly and almost without their knowing it to sacrifice new parts of their individual independence to it every day, and the same men who from time to time overturn a throne and ride roughshod over kings bend more and more without resistance to the slightest will of a clerk.

In no country in the world does the law hold so absolute a language as in America, and in no country is the right of applying it vested in so many hands.

La democrazia è il potere di un popolo informato.

The great advantage of the Americans is, that they have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution; and that they are born equal, instead of becoming so.

Despotism, suspicious by its very nature, views the separation of men as the best guarantee of its own permanence and usually does all it can to keep them in isolation. No defect of the human heart suits it better than egoism; a tyrant is relaxed enough to forgive his subjects for failing to love him, provided that they do not love one another...he gives the name of 'good citizens' to those who retreat into themselves.

It is difficult to associate a people in the work of government; but it is still more difficult to supply it with experience, and to inspire it with the feelings which it requires in order to govern well.

the people of the United States are so opposed to compulsory enlistment that I do not imagine it can ever be sanctioned by the laws.

Parties are a necessary evil in free governments.

The habit of inattention must be considered as the greatest bane of the democratic character