Quotes About People

When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

Among the leading matters which would occupy the attention of the meeting, were several important documents lately received from Europe, expressive of the sentiments that a very considerable portion of the people of the British Empire entertained respecting the deplorable situation of the colored people in the United States.

When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.

Cherish the people who make up your home, and you'll notice the hearth fires burn brighter than ever before.

The finest people, as people go, cannot help but betray a fair portion of fear and insecurity, even full-blown panic.

Some speculative minds have faith that we are en route to a utopia where people are not mainly absorbed in a job that is killing them or despondent because they do not have a killing job.

It considered trying to explain their error to them, but what would be the use? They would only go away with hurt feelings. You can't always expect people, or squirrels, to be rational.

These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Trying to introduce the concept of law and order to a people who had never been given reason to trust it, and who therefore found justice in blood feuds—they were so much more honorable, and interesting, and, well, bloody—was a terribly long and frustrating process.

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.

It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments...

But any war is harvest to such Governments, however ruinous it may be to a nation. It serves to keep up deceitful expectations, which prevent a people looking into the defects and abuses of Government. It is the "lo here!" and the "lo there!" that amuses and cheats the multitude.

In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole people, in which all degrees, tempers and characters are confounded, delivering themselves, by a miracle of exertion, from the destruction mediated against them, is it to be expected that nothing will happen? When men are sore with the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the prospects of new ones, is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of insensibility to be looked for?

the strength of government does not consist of anything within itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest which a people feel in supporting it.