WHAT IS GOVERNMENT

A government is a body that has the authority
to make and the power to enforce laws within a
civil, corporate, religious, academic, or other
organization or group.
Quotes
The object of government in peace and
in war is not the glory of rulers or of
races, but the happiness of the
common man. ~ William Beveridge
To prevent government from becoming
corrupt and tyrannous , its organization
and methods should be as simple as
possible, its functions be restricted to
those necessary to the common
welfare , and in all its parts it should be
kept as close to the people and as
directly within their control as may be.
~ Henry George
A limited democracy might indeed be
the best protector of individual liberty
and be better than any other form of
limited government, but an unlimited
democracy is probably worse than any
other form of unlimited government,
because its government loses the
power even to do what it thinks right if
any group on which its majority
depends thinks otherwise. ~ Friedrich
Hayek
The conception that government should
be guided by majority opinion makes
sense only if that opinion is
independent of government. ~ Friedrich
Hayek
It is not who governs but what
government is entitled to do that seems
to me the essential problem. ~
Friedrich Hayek
Notwithstanding reports that all economists
are now Keynesians and that we all support a
big increase in the burden of government, we
the undersigned do not believe that more
government spending is a way to improve
economic performance. More government
spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull
the United States economy out of the Great
Depression in the 1930s. More government
spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in
the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over
experience to believe that more government
spending will help the U.S. today. To improve
the economy, policymakers should focus on
reforms that remove impediments to work,
saving, investment and production. Lower tax
rates and a reduction in the burden of
government are the best ways of using fiscal
policy to boost growth.
The Cato Institute, " With all due respect
Mr. President, that is not true. " (2009)
The government has strategies. The people
have counterstrategies.
Ancient Chinese proverb, quoted in
Thomas J. Sargent, “Rational Expectations
and the Reconstruction of
Macroeconomics” (1980)
In some parts of the world, states have
collapsed as a result of internal and communal
conflicts, depriving their citizens of any effective
protection. Elsewhere, human security has been
jeopardized by governments which refuse to act
in the common interest, which persecute their
opponents and punish innocent members of
minority groups.
Kofi Annan , Watchtower ONLINE
LIBRARY
Where the people fear the government you
have tyranny. Where the government fears the
people you have liberty.
Barnhill, John Basil (1914). "Indictment of
Socialism No. 3" (PDF). Barnhill-Tichenor
Debate on Socialism . Saint Louis, Missouri:
National Rip-Saw Publishing. pp. p. 34.
Retrieved on 2008-10-16.
The object of government in peace and in war
is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the
happiness of the common man.
William Beveridge, Social Insurance and
Allied Services (1942), Part 7.
If the government becomes a law-breaker, it
breeds contempt for the law. It invites every
man to become a law unto himself. It invites
anarchy.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis , dissenting; Olmstead v. United
States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
A thousand years scarce serve to form a
state;
An hour may lay it in the dust.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ,
Canto II (1812), Stanza 84.
The danger is becoming greater. As the
arsenals of the superpowers grow in size and
sophistication and as other governments—
perhaps even, in the future, dozens of
governments—acquire these weapons, it may
be only a matter of time before madness,
desperation, greed or miscalculation lets loose
the terrible force.
Jimmy Carter , as quoted in The
Watchtower magazine, (15 August 1981).
Wherever is found what is called a paternal
government, there is found state education. It
has been found that the best way to insure
implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in
the nursery.
Benjamin Disraeli , speech in the House of
Commons (1874-06-15)
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.
John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
(1681), Part I, line 174.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the
government and the law of the land than
passing laws which cannot be enforced.
Albert Einstein , The World As I See It,
"Some Notes on my American
Impressions" (first published as "My First
Impression of the U.S.A." (1921)).
No government has the right to decide on the
truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in
any way the character of the questions
investigated. Neither may a government
determine the aesthetic value of artistic
creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or
artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on
the validity of economic, historic, religious, or
philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to
its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let
those citizens contribute to the further
adventure and the development of the human
race.
Richard Feynman , in "The Uncertainty of
Values", in The Meaning of It All: Thoughts
of a Citizen Scientist (1999).
A government big enough to give you
everything you want is a government big
enough to take from you everything you have.
Gerald Ford , presidential address to a
joint session of Congress, 12 August 1974
(May have been derived from similar
remarks by Barry Goldwater#Misattributed ).
The state is not a universal nor in itself an
autonomous source of power. The state is
nothing else but the effect, the profile, the
mobile shape of a perpetual statification or
statifications, in the sense of incessant
transactions which modify, or move, or
drastically change, or insidiously shift sources
of finance, modes of investment, decision-
making centers, forms and types of control,
relationships between local powers, the central
authority, and so on. In short, the state has no
heart, as we well know, but not just in the sense
that it has no feelings, either good or bad, but it
has no heart in the sense that it has no interior.
The state is nothing else but the mobile effect of
a regime of multiple governmentalities.
Michel Foucault (1979) The Birth of
Biopolitics.
All free governments are managed by the
combined wisdom and folly of the people.
James A. Garfield , letter to B. A. Hinsdale,
1880-04-21 (Jonas Mills Bundy, The
Nation's Hero – In Memoriam: The life of
James Abram Garfield , 1881, New York: A.
S. Barnes).
To prevent government from becoming
corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and
methods should be as simple as possible, its
functions be restricted to those necessary to
the common welfare, and in all its parts it
should be kept as close to the people and as
directly within their control as may be.
Henry George, Social Problems (1883),
Ch. 17 : The Functions of Government.
For just experience tells, in every soil,
That those who think must govern those that
toil.
Oliver Goldsmith , The Traveller (1764),
line 372.
Well, I would say that, as long-term
institutions, I am totally against dictatorships.
But a dictatorship may be a necessary system
for a transitional period. At times it is
necessary for a country to have, for a time,
some form or other of dictatorial power. As you
will understand, it is possible for a dictator to
govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible
for a democracy to govern with a total lack of
liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator
to democratic government lacking liberalism.
My personal impression — and this is valid for
South America — is that in Chile, for example,
we will witness a transition from a dictatorial
government to a liberal government. And during
this transition it may be necessary to maintain
certain dictatorial powers, not as something
permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.
Friedrich Hayek , Interview in El Mercurio
(1981).
A limited democracy might indeed be the
best protector of individual liberty and be
better than any other form of limited
government, but an unlimited democracy is
probably worse than any other form of
unlimited government, because its government
loses the power even to do what it thinks right
if any group on which its majority depends
thinks otherwise. If Mrs. Thatcher said that free
choice is to be exercised more in the market
place than in the ballot box, she has merely
uttered the truism that the first is indispensable
for individual freedom, while the second is not:
free choice can at least exist under a
dictatorship that can limit itself but not under
the government of an unlimited democracy
which cannot.
Friedrich Hayek , Letter to The Times
(July 11, 1978).
The conception that government should be
guided by majority opinion makes sense only if
that opinion is independent of government. The
ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the
view which will direct government emerges from
an independent and spontaneous process. It
requires, therefore, the existence of a large
sphere independent of majority control in which
the opinions of the individuals are formed.
Friedrich Hayek , The Road to Serfdom
(1944).
Once wide coercive powers are given to
governmental agencies for particular purposes,
such powers cannot be effectively controlled by
democratic assemblies.
Friedrich Hayek , The Constitution of
Liberty (1960), p. 116
The chief evil is unlimited government, and
nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.
The powers which modern democracy
possesses would be even more intolerable in
the hands of some small elite.'
Friedrich Hayek , Why I Am Not a
Conservative.
It is not democracy but unlimited
government that is objectionable, and I do not
see why the people should not learn to limit
the scope of majority rule as well as that of
any other form of government. At any rate, the
advantages of democracy as a method of
peaceful change and of political education seem
to be so great compared with those of any
other system that I can have no sympathy with
the antidemocratic strain of conservatism. It is
not who governs but what government is
entitled to do that seems to me the essential
problem.
Friedrich Hayek , Why I Am Not a
Conservative.
What experience and history teach is this, ...
that nations and governments have never
learned anything from history or acted upon any
lessons they might have drawn from it.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, cited in
Awake! magazine 2002, 8/8; article: The
Nations Are Still Not Learning
"Do you know who is responsible?" "Why of
course, it's the government!" "Jill, 'the
government' is several million people."
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange
Land (1961).
A rational anarchist believes that concepts
such as " state " and " society" and "government"
have no existence save as physically
exemplified in the acts of self -responsible
individuals . He believes that it is impossible to
shift blame, share blame, distribute blame … as
blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking
place inside human beings singly and nowhere
else. But being rational, he knows that not all
individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to
live perfectly in an imperfect world … aware that
his effort will be less than perfect yet
undismayed by self-knowledge of self- failure .
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh
Mistress (1966).
Whenever the people are well informed, they
can be trusted with their own government; that
whenever things get so far wrong as to attract
their notice, they may be relied on to set them
to rights.
Thomas Jefferson , letter to Richard Price
(8 January 1789).
A wise and frugal government, which shall
restrain men from injuring one another, shall
leave them otherwise free to regulate their own
pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it
has earned -- this is the sum of good
government
Thomas Jefferson , First Inaugural Address
(4 March 1801).
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it
expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson , letter to Colonel
Charles Yancey (6 January 1816).
But when they bring YOU in before public
assemblies and government officials and
authorities, do not become anxious about how
or what YOU will speak in defense or what YOU
will say; for the holy spirit will teach YOU in
that very hour the things YOU ought to say.
Jesus , Luke 12: 11-12 .
Their questions hit home, and I knew that I
could never again raise my voice against the
violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without
having first spoken clearly to the greatest
purveyor of violence in the world today—my
own government.
Martin Luther King, Jr. , Speech at
Riverside Church in New York City (4
March 1967).
Government, in the last analysis , is organized
opinion. Where there is little or no public
opinion, there is likely to be bad government,
which sooner or later becomes autocratic
government.
William Lyon Mackenzie King , Message of
the Carillon (1927).
Governments are nothing more or less than
gigantic criminal conspiracies, overgrown street
gangs with no claims whatsoever to legitimacy.
They are funded by theft and the basis of all
their operations is aggression. They're no more
entitled to keep their activities secret than any
other gaggle of murderers, rapists and thieves
is.
Tomas L. Knapp, "At war with the concept
of secrecy itself" (25 August 2013).
If men were angels, no government would be
necessary. If angels were to govern men,
neither external nor internal controls on
government would be necessary. In framing a
government which is to be administered by
men over men, the great difficulty lies in this:
you must first enable the government to control
the governed; and in the next place oblige it to
control itself.
James Madison , Federalist No. 51
(1788-02-06).
A popular government without popular
information, or the means of acquiring it, is but
a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps
both.
James Madison , letter to W.T. Barry
(1822-08-04).
What happened here was the gradual
habituation of the people, little by little, to being
governed by surprise; to receiving decisions
deliberated in secret; to believing that the
situation was so complicated that the
government had to act on information which the
people could not understand, or so dangerous
that, even if the people could not understand it,
it could not be released because of national
security. And their sense of identification with
Hitler , their trust in him, made it easier to widen
this gap and reassured those who would
otherwise have worried about it.
Mayer, Milton (1966) [1955]. They
Thought They Were Free: The Germans,
1933-45 (2nd edition ed.). University of
Chicago Press. pp. p. 166. ISBN
0-226-51192-8 .
The most dangerous man, to any
government, is the man who is able to think
things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he
comes to the conclusion that the government
he lives under is dishonest, insane, and
intolerable.
H. L. Mencken, The Smart Set , December
1919
On some great and glorious day the plain
folks of the land will reach their heart's desire
at last, and the White House will be adorned by
a downright moron.
H. L. Mencken In The Baltimore Sun, July
26, 1920.
The only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilized community, against his will, is to
prevent harm to others. His own good, either
physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
John Stuart Mill , On Liberty (1859),
Chapter I.
The way people in democracies think of the
government as something different from
themselves is a real handicap. And, of course,
sometimes the government confirms their
opinion.
Lewis Mumford , as quoted in Philosophers
of the Earth : Conversations with Ecologists
(1972) by Anne Chisholm.
Staat heisst das kälteste aller kalten
Ungeheuer. Kalt lügt es auch; und diese Lüge
kriecht aus seinem Munde: „Ich, der Staat, bin
das Volk.“ Lüge ist’s! Schaffende waren es, die
schufen die Völker und hängten einen Glauben
und eine Liebe über sie hin: also dienten sie
dem Leben. Vernichter sind es, die stellen
Fallen auf für Viele und heissen sie Staat: sie
hängen ein Schwert und hundert Begierden über
sie hin.
A state, is called the coldest of all cold
monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie
creepeth from its mouth: “I, the state, am the
people.” It is a lie! Creators were they who
created peoples, and hung a faith and a love
over them: thus they served life. Destroyers,
are they who lay snares for many, and call it
the state: they hang a sword and a hundred
cravings over them.
Friedrich Nietzsche , Thus spake
Zarathustra, XI. The New Idol ( German
Text ).
Authority has always attracted the lowest
elements in the human race. All through history
mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who
lord it over their fellows and toss commands in
every direction and would boss the grass in the
meadows about which way to bend in the wind
are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They
will submit to any indignity, perform any vile
act, do anything to achieve power. The worst
off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients
of sovereignty. Every government is a
parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a
democracy, the whores are us.
P. J. O'Rourke , Parliament of Whores
(1991).
Giving money and power to Government is
like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage
boys.
P. J. O'Rourke , Parliament of Whores
(1991).
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best.
Alexander Pope , An Essay on Man
(1733-34), Epistle III, line 303.
Government is not the solution to our
problem. Government is the problem.
Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural address
(1981).
Be thankful we're not getting all the
government we're paying for.
Will Rogers , attributed in Connie
Robertson, The Wordsworth Dictionary of
Quotations (1998).
For government, through high and low and
lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
Congreeing in a full and natural close,
Like music.
William Shakespeare , Henry V (c. 1599),
Act I, scene 2, line 190.
How, in one house,
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity? 'Tis hard; almost impossible.
William Shakespeare , King Lear (1608),
Act II, scene 4, line 243.
Why, this it is, when men are rul'd by
women.
William Shakespeare , Richard III (c. 1591),
Act I, scene 1, line 62.
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for
the security of property, is in reality instituted
for the defense of the rich against the poor, or
of those who have some property against those
who have none at all.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book V,
Chapter I, Part II, 775.
With the exception of the writ of habeas
corpus, a privilege not required under the
Jewish government, simply because it did not
allow of imprisonment, there is not a single
feature of free government that is not distinctly
developed in the Bible.
Gardiner Spring , reported in Josiah
Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning
Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 425.
The state calls its own violence law, but that
of the individual, crime.
Max Stirner , attributed in The Great
Quotations (1960) by George Seldes, p. 664.
… bills were passed, not only for national
objects but for individual cases, and laws were
most numerous when the commonwealth was
most corrupt.
Tacitus , Annals, Book III, 27
Common paraphrase: The more numerous
the laws, the more corrupt the government.
I heartily accept the motto, " That government
is best which governs least "; and I should like
to see it acted up to more rapidly and
systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to
this, which also I believe, "That government is
best which governs not at all"; and when men
are prepared for it, that will be the kind of
government which they will have.
Henry David Thoreau , Civil Disobedience
(1849).
[Administration] covers the surface of society
with a network of small complicated rules,
minute and uniform, through which the most
original minds and the most energetic
characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the
crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but
softened, bent, guided; men are seldom
restrained from acting, such a power does not
destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not
tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and
stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to
be nothing better than a flock of timid and
industrious animals, of which government is the
shepherd.
Alexis de Tocqueville , Democracy In
America (1835).
Government is violence, Christianity is
meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore,
government cannot be Christian, and a man
who wishes to be a Christian must not serve
government.
Leo Tolstoy, Letter to Eugen Heinrich
Schmitt (1896).
Bureaucracy and social harmony are
inversely proportional to each other.
Leon Trotsky , The Revolution Betrayed
(1936).
Government is either organized benevolence
or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude
permits no shading.
John Updike , Buchanan Dying (1974), Act
I
Fictional, author unidentified
A government is a body of people, usually
notably ungoverned.
Shepherd Book, Firefly , episode "War
Stories". (Shepherd is quoting Capt.
Malcolm Reynolds).
People should not be afraid of their
government. Governments should be afraid of
their people.
V in V for Vendetta (2006).
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of
Quotations (1989)
And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power
wielded by pigmies, came into the world.
Honoré de Balzac, Bureaucracy (vol. 12 in
The Works of Honoré de Balzac), p. 13
(1901, reprinted 1971).
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it
breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to
become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
To declare that in the administration of the
criminal law the end justifies the means—to
declare that the Government may commit
crimes in order to secure the conviction of a
private criminal—would bring terrible
retribution.
Louis D. Brandeis , dissenting, Olmstead et
al. v. United States, 277 U.S. 485 (1928).
We cannot meet it [the threat of dictatorship]
if we turn this country into a wishy-washy
imitation of totalitarianism, where every man's
hand is out for pabulum and virile creativeness
has given place to the patronizing favor of
swollen bureaucracy.
Vannevar Bush , speech at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, December 5, 1949, as
reported by The New York Times, December
6, 1949, p. 12.
The nearest approach to immortality on earth
is a government bureau.
James Francis Byrnes , Speaking Frankly,
p. 7 (1947).
In the long-run every Government is the
exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom
and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like
Government.
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, ed.
Richard D. Altick, book 4, chapter 4, p. 267
(1965). First published in 1843.
Only perhaps in the United States, which
alone of countries can do without governing,—
every man being at least able to live, and move
off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it
will,—can such a form of so-called
"Government" continue for any length of time to
torment men with the semblance, when the
indispensable substance is not there.
Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets,
no. 6, p. 16–17 (1850).
The administration of government, like a
guardianship ought to be directed to the good
of those who confer, not of those who receive
the trust.
Attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero . Tryon
Edwards, Dictionary of Thoughts, p. 204
(1891). Reported as unverified in
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of
Quotations (1989).
For nearly five years the present Ministers
have harassed every trade, worried every
profession, and assailed or menaced every
class, institution, and species of property in the
country. Occasionally they have varied this
state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job
which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling
into mistakes which have been always
discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this
they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it;
but the country has, I think, made up its mind
to close this career of plundering and
blundering.
Benjamin Disraeli , letter to Lord Grey de
Wilton, October 3, 1873. W. F. Monypenny
and George Earl Buckle, The Life of Benjamin
Disraeli, vol. 5, chapter 7, p. 262 (1920).
Lord Grey was standing for Parliament, and
was a personal friend of Disraeli's, who
"wrote for publication … a full-blooded letter,
conceived in the hustings spirit, but it only
restated, in pointed fashion, charges which
Disraeli had often brought against Ministers
in public speeches and … [in] the House of
Commons. A vehement outcry was,
however, raised against its tone and
language; and even many of his own party
attributed to this indiscretion Grey de
Wilton's failure by a small majority" to win
the seat. Disraeli "was quite impenitent" (p.
262). A footnote indicates that the
"plundering and blundering" phrase had
been used before by Disraeli, in Coningsby,
book 2, chapter 4.
The American wage earner and the American
housewife are a lot better economists than
most economists care to admit. They know that
a government big enough to give you
everything you want is a government big
enough to take from you everything you have.
Gerald R. Ford , remarks to a joint session
of Congress, August 12, 1974. The Public
Papers of the Presidents of the United
States: Gerald R. Ford, 1974, p. 6. Ford was
quoted as having expressed the same idea
nearly fifteen years earlier: "If the
government is big enough to give you
everything you want, it is big enough to take
away everything you have." John F. Parker,
"If Elected, I Promise…," Stories and Gems of
Wisdom by and About Politicians, p. 193
(1960). No source is given.
In a political sense, there is one problem that
currently underlies all of the others. That
problem is making Government sufficiently
responsive to the people. If we don't make
government responsive to the people, we don't
make it believable. And we must make
government believable if we are to have a
functioning democracy.
Gerald R. Ford , address at Robert A. Taft
government seminar banquet, Jacksonville
University, Jacksonville, Florida, December
16, 1971. Gerald R. Ford, Selected
Speeches, ed. Michael V. Doyle, p. 170
(1973).
The small progress we have made after four
or five weeks close attendance and continual
reasonings with each other … is, methinks, a
melancholy proof of the imperfection of the
human understanding. We indeed seem to feel
our own want of political wisdom, since we
have been running about in search of it. We
have gone back to ancient history for models of
government, and examined the different forms of
those republics which, having been formed with
seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer
exist.
Benjamin Franklin , debates in the
Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, June 28, 1787. James
Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention,
ed. E. H. Scott, p. 259 (1893).
Our form of government may remain
notwithstanding legislation or decision, but, as
long ago observed, it is with governments, as
with religion, the form may survive the
substance of the faith.
Melville W. Fuller, dissenting, the Lottery
Case , 188 U.S. 375 (1903).
Fellow-citizens! Clouds and darkness are
round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters
and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and
judgment are the habitation of his throne! Mercy
and truth shall go before his face! Fellow-
citizens! God reigns and the government at
Washington still lives.
James A. Garfield , address to calm a
crowd in New York City, April 17, 1865, two
days after the death of President Lincoln.
Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters
of James Abram Garfield, vol. 1, p. 383
(1925). Smith notes that while the tradition
of this speech was so well established
during Garfield's own lifetime as to become
"a familiar commonplace," no clipping of it
exists among Garfield's papers, nor did
Garfield himself, so far as known, refer to it
in later times.
Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige,
die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren .
Which is the best government? That which
teaches us to govern ourselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , The Maxims
and Reflections of Goethe, trans. Bailey
Saunders, maxim 225, p. 107 (1893).
A wise government knows how to enforce
with temper, or to conciliate with dignity, but a
weak one is odious in the former, and
contemptible in the latter.
George Grenville , speech against the
motion for expelling John Wilkes, House of
Commons, February 3, 1769. The
Parliamentary History of England, printed by
T. C. Hansard, vol. 16, col. 570 (1813).
"Though Grenville had taken a prominent
part in the early measures against Wilkes, he
opposed his expulsion from the House of
Commons on 3 Feb. 1769, in probably the
ablest speech that he ever made." The
Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 8, p.
559.
The system … is the best that the present
views and circumstances of the country will
permit.
Alexander Hamilton , The Federalist, ed.
Benjamin F. Wright, no. 85, p. 544 (1961).
Hamilton acknowledged the imperfect nature
of the government that would result from
adopting the Constitution, but he felt it
imprudent "to prolong the precarious state of
our national affairs … in the chimerical
pursuit of the perfect plan."
But, sir, I have said I do not dread these
corporations as instruments of power to destroy
this country, because there are a thousand
agencies which can regulate, restrain, and
control them; but there is a corporation we may
all well dread. That corporation is the Federal
Government.
Benjamin Harvey Hill, remarks in the
Senate on the Pacific Railroad funding bill,
March 27, 1878, Congressional Record, vol.
7, p. 2067.
Far more important to me is, that I should be
loyal to what I regard as the law of my political
life, which is this: a belief that that country is
best governed, which is least governed …
George Hoadly , remarks in Ohio
constitutional convention, June 19, 1873.
Official Report of the Proceedings and
Debates of the Third Constitutional
Convention of Ohio…, p. 436 (1873).
It was once said that the moral test of
government is how that government treats
those who are in the dawn of life, the children;
those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly;
and those who are in the shadows of life—the
sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Hubert Humphrey , remarks at the
dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey
Building, November 1, 1977. Congressional
Record, November 4, 1977, vol. 123, p.
37287.
I confess I have the same fears for our South
American brethren; the qualifications for self-
government in society are not innate. They are
the result of habit and long training, and for
these they will require time and probably much
suffering.
Thomas Jefferson , letter to Edward Everett,
March 27, 1824. The Writings of Thomas
Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb, vol. 16,
p. 22 (1904).
I think our governments will remain virtuous
for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly
agricultural; and this will be as long as there
shall be vacant lands in any part of America.
When they get piled upon one another in large
cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as
in Europe.
Thomas Jefferson , letter to James
Madison, December 20, 1787. The Papers of
Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol.
12, p. 442 (1955).
If we can prevent the government from
wasting the labors of the people, under the
pretence of taking care of them, they must
become happy.
Thomas Jefferson , letter to Thomas
Cooper, November 29, 1802. The Writings of
Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul L. Ford, vol. 8,
p. 178 (1897).
Were we directed from Washington when to
sow, & when to reap, we should soon want
bread.
Thomas Jefferson , "Autobiography," The
Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul L.
Ford, vol. 1, p. 113 (1892).
I believe that the essence of government lies
with unceasing concern for the welfare and
dignity and decency and innate integrity of life
for every individual. I don't like to say this and
wish I didn't have to add these words to make
it clear but I will—regardless of color, creed,
ancestry, sex or age.
Lyndon B. Johnson , remarks at a civil
rights symposium, LBJ Library, Austin,
Texas, December 12, 1972. Text, p. 1.
Before my term has ended, we shall have to
test anew whether a nation organized and
governed such as ours can endure. The
outcome is by no means certain.
John F. Kennedy, annual message to
Congress on the State of the Union, January
30, 1961. The Public Papers of the
Presidents of the United States: John F.
Kennedy, 1961 , p. 19.
Gentlemen, suppose all the property you
were worth was in gold, and you had put it in
the hands of Blondin to carry across the
Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the
cable, or keep shouting out to him—"Blondin,
stand up a little straighter—Blondin, stoop a
little more—go a little faster—lean a little more
to the north—lean a little more to the south?"
No, you would hold your breath as well as your
tongue, and keep your hands off until he was
safe over. The Government are carrying an
immense weight. Untold treasures are in their
hands. They are doing the very best they can.
Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we'll get
you safe across.
Abraham Lincoln , reply to critics of his
administration, 1864. Francis B. Carpenter,
"Anecdotes and Reminiscences of President
Lincoln" in Henry Jarvis Raymond, The Life
and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln…, p.
752 (1865). Carpenter, a portrait artist, lived
in the White House for six months beginning
February 1864, to paint the president and the
entire Cabinet. His relations with the
president became of an "intimate character,"
and he was permitted "the freedom of his
private office at almost all hours,… privileged
to see and know more of his daily life" than
most people. He states that he "endeavored
to embrace only those [anecdotes] which
bear the marks of authenticity. Many … I
myself heard the President relate; others
were communicated to me by persons who
either heard or took part in them" (p. 725).
Blondin (real name Jean François Gravelet)
was a French tightrope walker who crossed
Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1855, 1859,
and 1860.
I am struggling to maintain the government,
not to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to
prevent others from overthrowing it.
Abraham Lincoln , response to a serenade,
October 19, 1864. The Collected Works of
Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 8,
p. 52 (1953).
Must a government, of necessity, be too
strong for the liberties of its own people, or too
weak to maintain its own existence?
Abraham Lincoln , message to Congress in
special session, July 4, 1861. The Collected
Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P.
Basler, vol. 4, p. 426 (1953).
There is an important sense in which
government is distinctive from administration.
One is perpetual, the other is temporary and
changeable. A man may be loyal to his
government and yet oppose the particular
principles and methods of administration.
Attributed to Abraham Lincoln . W. T.
Roche, address at Washington, Kansas, April
9, 1942: "These words were spoken by
Lincoln, then a Congressman, in defense of
his condemnation of President Polk for
provoking the Mexican War." Congressional
Record , April 15, 1942, vol. 88, Appendix, p.
A1493. Not found in The Collected Works of
Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (1953).
While the people retain their virtue, and
vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of
wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure
the government, in the short space of four
years.
Abraham Lincoln , first inaugural address
(final text), March 4, 1861. The Collected
Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P.
Basler, vol. 4, p. 270 (1953).
We must judge of a form of government by
its general tendency, not by happy accidents.
Thomas Babington Macaulay , speech on
parliamentary reform, March 2, 1831. The
Complete Writings of Lord Macaulay, vol. 17,
p. 13 (1900).
Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are
free with servitude all around us, why our
Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended,
why our press is still subject to no censor, why
we still have the liberty of association, why our
representative institutions still abide in all their
strength, I answer, It is because in the year of
revolutions we stood firmly by our government
in its peril; and, if I am asked why we stood by
our government in its peril, when men all
around us were engaged in pulling
governments down, I answer, It was because we
knew that though our government was not a
perfect government, it was a good government,
that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal
remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed
just demands, that we had obtained
concessions of inestimable value, not by
beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, not
by tearing up the pavement, not by running to
the gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but
by the mere force of reason and public opinion.
Thomas Babington Macaulay , speech on
his re-election to Parliament, November 2,
1852. Macaulay, Miscellanies, vol. 2 (vol. 18
of The Complete Writings of Lord Macaulay),
p. 170–71 (1900).
The free system of government we have
established is so congenial with reason, with
common sense, and with a universal feeling,
that it must produce approbation and a desire
of imitation, as avenues may be found for truth
to the knowledge of nations.
James Madison , letter to Pierre E.
Duponceau, January 23, 1826. James
Madison papers, Library of Congress. These
words are inscribed in the Madison Memorial
Hall, Library of Congress James Madison
Memorial Building.
If men were angels, no government would be
necessary. If angels were to govern men,
neither external nor internal controls on
government would be necessary.
James Madison , The Federalist, ed.
Benjamin F. Wright, no. 51, p. 356 (1961).
Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle
mérite .
Every country has the government it
deserves.
Joseph de Maistre, letter to M. le
chevalier de…, August 15, 1811. Lettres et
Opuscules Inédits du Comte J. De Maistre,
5th ed., book 1, p. 264 (1869).
Thus, a people may prefer a free government,
but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or
cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are
unequal to the exertions necessary for
preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it
is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by
the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by
momentary discouragement, or temporary
panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual,
they can be induced to lay their liberties at the
feet even of a great man, or trust him with
powers which enable him to subvert their
institutions; in all these cases they are more or
less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for
their good to have had it even for a short time,
they are unlikely long to enjoy it.
John Stuart Mill , Considerations on
Representative Government, p. 6 (1861).
When the people are too much attached to
savage independence, to be tolerant of the
amount of power to which it is for their good
that they should be subject, the state of society
(as already observed) is not yet ripe for
representative government.
John Stuart Mill , Considerations on
Representative Government, chapter 6, p.
108 (1861).
You have the God-given right to kick the
government around—don't hesitate to do so.
Edmund Muskie, speech in South Bend,
Indiana, September 11, 1968, as reported by
the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal,
September 12, 1968, p. A3.
Ne pas laisser vieillir les hommes doit être le
grand art du gouvernement .
The great art of governing consists in not
letting men grow old in their jobs.
Napoleon I , letter to Lazare Nicolas
Marguerite Carnot, August 9, 1796.
Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, vol. 1, p.
532 (1858).
Governments, like clocks, go from the motion
men give them, and as governments are made
and moved by men, so by them they are ruined
too. Wherefore governments rather depend
upon men, than men upon governments. Let
men be good, and the government cannot be
bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be
bad, let the government be never so good, they
will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.
William Penn , in his Preface to the First
Frame of Government [constitution] for
Pennsylvania, which was formally adopted in
England, April 25, 1682. The William Penn
Tercentenary Committee, Remember William
Penn, 2d ed., p. 81 (1945). The committee
noted that the preface was perhaps "Penn's
best expression of his ideas of
government" (p. 80).
Men must be governed by God or they will
be ruled by tyrants.
Attributed to William Penn. Virginia Ely, I
Quote, p. 189 (1947). Reported as unverified
in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of
Quotations (1989). Numerous sources cite
this remark but it has not been found in
Penn's writings.
To be governed is to be watched over,
inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at,
regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at,
controlled, assessed, weighed, censored,
ordered about, by men who have neither the
right nor the knowledge nor the virtue.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon . From an English
translation of his Idée Générale de la
Révolution au XIXe Siècle (1851) quoted in
James Joll, The Anarchists, chapter 3, p. 78
(1964).
There is no credit to being a comedian, when
you have the whole Government working for
you. All you have to do is report the facts. I
don't even have to exaggerate.
Will Rogers . P.J. O'Brien, Will Rogers,
Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and
Wisdom, chapter 9, p. 157 (1935).
Governments can err, Presidents do make
mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that
divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-
blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in
different scales. Better the occasional faults of a
Government that lives in a spirit of charity than
the consistent omissions of a Government
frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Franklin D. Roosevelt , speech accepting
renomination for the presidency, June 27,
1936. The Public Papers and Addresses of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936, p. 235 (1938).
Senator John F. Kennedy quoted these
words of Roosevelt's in a campaign speech
in Houston, Texas, September 12, 1960.
Freedom of Communications, final report of
the Committee on Commerce, United States
Senate, part 1, p. 203 (1961). Senate Rept.
87–994.
History proves that dictatorships do not grow
out of strong and successful governments, but
out of weak and helpless ones. If by democratic
methods people get a government strong
enough to protect them from fear and
starvation, their democracy succeeds; but if
they do not, they grow impatient. Therefore, the
only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a
government strong enough to protect the
interests of the people, and a people strong
enough and well enough informed to maintain
its sovereign control over its government.
Franklin D. Roosevelt , fireside chat on
economic conditions, April 14, 1938. The
Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D.
Roosevelt, 1938, p. 242–43 (1941).
The true art of government consists in not
governing too much.
Jonathan Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph,
sermon, at parish church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, London, February 19, 1773. A Sermon
Preached Before the Incorporated Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, p. 11 (1773). Reprinted in English
Defenders of American Freedoms, 1774–
1778, ed. Paul H. Smith, p. 22–23 (1972).
Public confidence in the integrity of the
Government is indispensable to faith in
democracy; and when we lose faith in the
system, we have lost faith in everything we fight
and spend for.
Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois,
speech before the Los Angeles Town Club,
Los Angeles, California, September 11, 1952.
Speeches of Adlai Stevenson, p. 31 (1952).
I heartily accept the motto,—"That
government is best which governs least;" and I
should like to see it acted up to more rapidly
and systematically. Carried out, it finally
amounts to this, which I also believe,—"That
government is best which governs not at all;"
and when men are prepared for it, that will be
the kind of government which they will have.
Government is at best but an expedient; but
most governments are usually, and all
governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
Henry David Thoreau , Civil Disobedience,
first paragraph, Walden and Civil
Disobedience, ed. Owen Thomas, p. 224
(1966). This essay was first published in
1849. The motto Thoreau referred to was
almost certainly that of The United States
Magazine and Democratic Review, a literary-
political monthly: "The best government is
that which governs least." Ralph Waldo
Emerson expressed a similar sentiment in
his essay "Politics:" "Hence the less
government we have the better—the fewer
laws and the less confided power." Essays:
Second Series, in The Complete Writings of
Ralph Waldo Emerson , vol. 1, p. 302 (1929).
Government is not reason, it is not
eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome
servant and a fearful master. Never for a
moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
Attributed to George Washington. Frank J.
Wilstach, A Dictionary of Similes, 2d ed., p.
526 (1924). This can be found with minor
variations in wording and in punctuation, and
with "fearful" for "troublesome," in George
Seldes, The Great Quotations, p. 727 (1966).
Reported as unverified in Respectfully
Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). In
his most recent book of quotations, The
Great Thoughts (1985), Seldes says, p. 441,
col. 2, footnote, this paragraph "although
credited to the 'Farewell' [address] cannot be
found in it. Lawson Hamblin, who owns a
facsimile, and Horace Peck, America's
foremost authority on quotations, informed
me this paragraph is apocryphal."
Other misfortunes may be borne, or their
effects overcome. If disastrous war should
sweep our commerce from the ocean, another
generation may renew it; if it exhaust our
treasury, future industry may replenish it;… It
were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder
Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars
should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all
covered by the dust of the valley. All these
might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the
fabric of demolished government? Who shall
rear again the well-proportioned columns of
constitutional liberty?… No, if these columns fall,
they will be raised not again…. they will be the
remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece
or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional
American liberty.
Daniel Webster , "The Character of
Washington," speech delivered in
Washington, D.C., at a public dinner in
honor of the centennial birthday of George
Washington, February 22, 1832. The Works
of Daniel Webster, 10th ed., vol. 1, p. 231
(1857).
Whatever government is not a government of
laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it
may.
Daniel Webster , at a reception in Bangor,
Maine, August 25, 1835. The Writings and
Speeches of Daniel Webster, vol. 2, p. 165
(1903).
Trust nothing to the enthusiasm of the
people. Give them a strong and a just, and, if
possible, a good, government; but, above all, a
strong one.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington,
letter to Lieutenant-General Lord William
Bentinck, December 24, 1811. John
Gurwood, Selections from the Dispatches
and General Orders of Field Marshal, the
Duke of Wellington, p. 545 (1851).
My reading of history convinces me that
most bad government has grown out of too
much government.
John Sharp Williams, Thomas Jefferson:
His Permanent Influence on American
Institutions, p. 49 (1913). Lecture delivered
at Columbia University, New York City, 1912.
Too much law was too much government;
and too much government was too little
individual privilege,—as too much individual
privilege in its turn was selfish license.
Woodrow Wilson , "The Author and Signers
of the Declaration of Independence," address
at Jamestown exposition, Norfolk, Virginia,
July 4, 1907. The Papers of Woodrow
Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link, vol. 17, p. 254
(1974).
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical
Quotations
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of
Practical Quotations (1922), p. 329-35.
The declaration that our People are hostile to
a government made by themselves, for
themselves, and conducted by themselves, is
an insult.
John Adams , address to the citizens of
Westmoreland Co., Virginia. Answered July
11, 1798. See also Thomas Cooper, Some
information respecting America (1794). In
Report of a Meeting of the Mass. Historical
Society by Samuel A. Green (May 9, 1901).
* * The manners of women are the surest
criterion by which to determine whether a
republican government is practicable in a nation
or not.
John Adams , Diary. June 2, 1778. Charles
Francis Adams' Life of Adams, Volume III, p.
171.
Yesterday the greatest question was decided
which was ever debated in America; and a
greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided
among men. A resolution was passed without
one dissenting colony, that those United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent States.
John Adams , letter to Mrs. Adams. July 3,
1776.
Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans
make a state; but where men are who know
how to take care of themselves, these are cities
and walls.
Attributed to Alcæus by Aristides ,
Orations , Volume II. (Jebb's edition. Austin's
translation).
States are great engines moving slowly.
Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning,
Book II.
Adeo ut omnes imperii virga sive bacillum
vere superius inflexum sit.
So that every wand or staff of empire is
forsooth curved at top.
Francis Bacon, De Sapientia Veterum
(1609). 6. Pan, sive Natura. Sometimes
translated, "All sceptres are crooked atop."
Referring to the shepherd's crook of Pan,
and implying that government needs to be
roundabout in method.
It [Calvinism] established a religion without a
prelate, a government without a king.
George Bancroft, History of the United
States, Volume III, Chapter VI.
Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness
we bring
A Church without a bishop, a State without a
King.
Anonymous, Puritan's Mistake (1844).
Yet if thou didst but know how little wit
governs this mighty universe.
Mrs. A. Behn , Comedy of The Round
Heads, Act I, scene 2.
"Whatever is, is not," is the maxim of the
anarchist, as often as anything comes across
him in the shape of a law which he happens not
to like.
Richard Bentley, Declaration of Rights .
England is the mother of parliaments.
John Bright , speech at Birmingham, Jan.
18, 1865. See Thorold Rogers' ed. of
Bright's Speeches, Volume II, p. 112.
Appeared in London Times, Jan. 19, 1865.
I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for
Reform,—thirty years ago the great watchwords
of the great Liberal Party.
John Bright. Speech at Birmingham Town
Hall, April 28, 1859. Attributed to Joseph
Hume by Sir Charles Dilke in the Morning
Herald, Aug. 2, 1899. Probably said by
William IV to Earl Gray, in an interview, Nov.
17, 1830. Found in H. B.'s Cartoons, No. 93,
pub. Nov. 26, 1830. Also in a letter of
Princess Lieven, Nov., 1830. See Warren's
Ten Thousand a Year. (Inscribed on the
banner of Tittlebat Titmouse.) Referred to in
Molesworth's Hist. of the Reform Bill of
1832, p. 98.
Well, will anybody deny now that the
Government at Washington, as regards its own
people, is the strongest government in the
world at this hour? And for this simple reason,
that it is based on the will, and the good will, of
an instructed people.
John Bright , speech at Rochdale (Nov. 24,
1863).
So then because some towns in England are
not represented, America is to have no
representative at all. They are "our children";
put when children ask for bread we are not to
give a stone.
Edmund Burke , speech on American
Taxation, Volume II, p. 74.
And having looked to Government for bread,
on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite
the hand that fed them.
Edmund Burke , Thoughts and Details on
Scarcity, Volume V, p. 156.
When bad men combine, the good must
associate.
Edmund Burke , Thoughts on the Cause of
the Present Discontent .
Support a compatriot against a native,
however the former may blunder or plunder.
R. F. Burton , Explorations of the
Highroads of Brazil (c. 1869), I, p. 11.
Nothing's more dull and negligent
Than an old, lazy government,
That knows no interest of state,
But such as serves a present strait.
Samuel Butler , Miscellaneous Thoughts ,
line 159.
A power has arisen up in the Government
greater than the people themselves, consisting
of many and various and powerful interests,
combined into one mass, and held together by
the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the
banks.
John C. Calhoun , in the U.S. Senate (May
28, 1836). "Cohesive power of public
plunder." As quoted by Grover Cleveland.
Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and
fifty-eight miscellaneous persons, set to consult
about "business," with twenty-seven millions,
mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and
checking and criticising them. Was there ever,
since the world began, will there ever be till the
world end, any "business" accomplished in
these circumstances?
Thomas Carlyle, Latter Day Pamphlets,
Parliaments (referring to the relation of the
Parliament to the British people, June 1,
1850).
There are but two ways of paying debt—
increase of industry in raising income, increase
of thrift in laying out.
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present ,
Government , Chapter X.
And the first thing I would do in my
government, I would have nobody to control
me, I would be absolute; and who but I: now,
he that is absolute, can do what he likes; he
that can do what he likes, can take his
pleasure; he that can take his pleasure, can be
content; and he that can be content, has no
more to desire; so the matter's over.
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
(1605-15), Part I, Book IV, Chapter XXIII.
There was a State without kings or nobles;
there was a church without a bishop; there was
a people governed by grave magistrates which
it had elected, and equal laws which it had
framed.
Rufus Choate , speech before the New
England Society (December 22, 1843).
Who's in or out, who moves this grand
machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity nor spleen:
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet show:
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master wire.
Charles Churchill , Night, line 257.
They have proved themselves offensive
partisans and unscrupulous manipulators of
local party management.
Grover Cleveland , letter to George William
Curtis. Dec. 25, 1884.
Though the people support the government
the government should not support the people.
Grover Cleveland , Veto of Texas Seed-bill
(Feb. 16, 1887).
I have considered the pension list of the
republic a roll of honor.
Grover Cleveland , Veto of Mary Ann
Dougherty's Pension (July 5, 1888).
The communism of combined wealth and
capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity
and selfishness which assiduously undermines
the justice and integrity of free institutions, is
not less dangerous than the communism of
oppressed poverty and toil which, exasperated
by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild
disorder the citadel of misrule.
Grover Cleveland , Annual Message (1888).
Whatever was required to be done, the
Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all
the public departments in the art of perceiving
how not to do it.
Charles Dickens , Little Dorrit, Book III,
Chapter X.
The country has, I think, made up its mind to
close this career of plundering and blundering.
Benjamin Disraeli , letter to Lord Grey de
Welton (Oct., 1873).
The divine right of kings may have been a
plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of
government is the keystone of human progress,
and without it governments sink into police, and
a nation is degraded into a mob.
Benjamin Disraeli , Lothair (1870), general
preface.
A Conservative Government is an organized
hypocrisy.
Benjamin Disraeli , speech (March 17,
1845).
Individualities may form communities, but it
is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Benjamin Disraeli , speech at Manchester
(1866).
For where's the State beneath the Firmament,
That doth excell the Bees for Government?
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas , Divine
Weekes and Workes, First Week, Fifth Day ,
Part I.
Shall we judge a country by the majority, or
by the minority? By the minority, surely.
Ralph Waldo Emerson , Conduct of Life,
Considerations by the Way .
Fellow-citizens: Clouds and darkness are
around Him; His pavilion is dark waters and
thick clouds; justice and judgment are the
establishment of His throne; mercy and truth
shall go before His face! Fellow citizens! God
reigns and the Government at Washington lives.
James A. Garfield , address (April, 1865).
From the balcony of the New York Custom
House to a crowd, excited by the news of
President Lincoln's assassination.
When constabulary duty's to be done
A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
W. S. Gilbert, Pirates of Penzance .
Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige die
uns lehrt uns selbst zu regieren.
What government is the best? That which
teaches us to govern ourselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Sprüche in
Prosa , III.
Perish commerce. Let the constitution live!
George Hardinge , debate on the Traitorous
Correspondence Bill (March 22, 1793).
Quoted by William Windham.
Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation.
Abram S. Hewitt, Democratic Platform
(1884).
No sooner does he hear any of his brothers
mention reform or retrenchment, than up he
jumps.
Washington Irving , The Sketch Book , John
Bull (1820).
There was one species of despotism under
which he had long groaned, and that was
petticoat government.
Washington Irving , Rip Van Winkle .
Of the various executive abilities, no one
excited more anxious concern than that of
placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the
hands of honest men, with understanding
sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the
same time more difficult to fulfill. The
knowledge of character possessed by a single
individual is of necessity limited. To seek out
the best through the whole Union, we must
resort to the information which from the best of
men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest
motives, is sometimes incorrect.
Thomas Jefferson , letter to Elias Shipman
and others of New Haven. July 12, 1801.
Paraphrased by John B. McMaster in his
History of the People of the United States, II.
586. One sentence will undoubtedly be
remembered till our republic ceases to exist.
'No duty the Executive had to perform was
so trying,' he observed, 'as to put the right
man in the right place.'.
The trappings of a monarchy would set up an
ordinary commonwealth.
Samuel Johnson , Life of Milton.
Excise, a hateful tax levied upon
commodities.
Samuel Johnson , definition of excise in
his Dictionary.
What constitutes a state?
. . . . . .
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare
maintain.
. . . . . .
And sovereign law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate,
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
Sir William Jones , Ode in Imitation of
Alcæus .
The Americans equally detest the pageantry
of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a
bishop.
Junius , Letter XXXV (Dec. 19, 1769).
Salus populi suprema lex.
The safety of the State is the highest law.
Justinian , Twelve Tables.
This end (Robespierre's theories) was the
representative sovereignty of all the citizens
concentrated in an election as extensive as the
people themselves, and acting by the people,
and for the people in an elective council, which
should be all the government.
Alphonse de Lamartine , History of the
Girondists , Volume III, p. 104. Bohn's ed.
1850.
Misera contribuens plebs.
The poor taxpaying people.
Law of the Hungarian Diet of 1751, Article
37.
The Congress of Vienna does not walk, but it
dances.
Prince de Ligne .
I go for all sharing the privileges of the
government who assist in bearing its burdens.
Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the
right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by
no means excluding females.
Abraham Lincoln , written in 1836.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I
believe this government cannot endure
permanently half-slave and half-free.
Abraham Lincoln , speech, June 17, 1858.
See W. O. Stoddard's Life of Lincoln.
If by the mere force of numbers a majority
should deprive a minority of any clearly written
constitutional right, it might in a moral point of
view, justify revolution—certainly would if such
a right were a vital one.
Abraham Lincoln , First Inaugural Address.
March 4, 1861.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom, and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln , speech at Gettysburg.
1863. The phrase "of the people, for the
people and by the people" is not original
with Lincoln. There is a tradition that the
phrase, "The Bible shall be for the
government of the people, for the people and
by the people," appears in the preface of the
Wyclif Bible of 1384, or in the Hereford Bible,
or in a pamphlet of the period treating of
that version. See Notes and Queries, Feb.
12, 1916, p. 127. Albert Mathews, of Boston,
examined the reprint of 1850 of the Wyclif
Bible, and finds no reference to it. There is a
preface to the Old and the New Testament,
and a prologue to each book, probably
written by John Purvey.
All your strength is in your union,
All your danger is in discord.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Song of
Hiawatha (1855), I, line 112.
L'état!—c'est moi!
The state!—it is I!
Attributed to Louis XIV of France. Dulaure,
History of Paris , p. 387. See Chéruel,
Histoire de l'Administration Monarchique en
France , II. 32.
That is the best government which desires to
make the people happy, and knows how to
make them happy.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron
Macaulay , On Mitford's History of Greece
(1824).
The Commons, faithful to their system,
remained in a wise and masterly inactivity.
Sir James Mackintosh , Vindiciæ Gatticæ,
Section I.
The government of the Union, then, is
emphatically and truly a government of the
people. In form and in substance it emanates
from them. Its powers are granted by them, and
are to be exercised directly on them and for
their benefit.
Chief Justice John Marshall , McCulloch
vs. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316 (1819).
The all-men power; government over all, by
all, and for the sake of all.
Chief Justice John Marshall . Pamphlet.
The Relation of Slavery to a Republican Form
of Government . Speech delivered at the New
England Anti-Slavery Convention (May 26,
1858). Pamphlet used by Lincoln when
preparing speeches. This phrase was
underlined by him.
To make a bank, was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.
Andrew Marvell , The Character of Holland .
States are not made, nor patched; they grow:
Grow slow through centuries of pain,
And grow correctly in the main;
But only grow by certain laws,
Of certain bits in certain jaws.
John Masefield , Everlasting Mercy , Stanza
60.
Hope nothing from foreign governments.
They will never be really willing to aid you until
you have shown that you are strong enough to
conquer without them.
Giuseppe Mazzini , Life and Writings ,
Young Italy .
If the prince of a State love benevolence, he
will have no opponent in all the empire.
Mencius , Works , Book IV, Part I, Chapter
7.
Unearned increment.
John Stuart Mill , Political Economy, Book
V, Chapter II, Section 5. Phrase used in the
land agitation of 1870–71. Undoubtedly
original with Mill.
La corruption de chaque gouvernement
commence presque toujours par celle des
principes.
The deterioration of a government begins
almost always by the decay of its principles.
Charles de Montesquieu, De l'Esprit , VIII,
Chapter I.
Les républiques finissent par le luxe; les
monarchies, par la pauvreté.
Republics end through luxury; monarchies
through poverty.
Charles de Montesquieu, De l'Esprit , VII,
Chapter IV.
Nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur
mundus.
Learn, my son, with how little wisdom the
world is governed.
Attributed to Axel von Oxenstierna .
Buchmann, Geflügelte Wörte , attributes it as
likely to Pope Julius III, also to Orselaer,
tutor to the sons of a Markgraf of Baden.
Lord Chatham claims it for Pope Alexander
VI, Jules or Leo, in Letter to Lord Shelburne,
Jan. 25, 1775. Conrad von Bennington,
Dutch Statesman, also given credit. Quoted
by Dr. Arbuthnot , letter to Swift, 1732–3.
There is what I call the American idea. * * *
This idea demands, as the proximate
organization thereof, a democracy,—that is, a
government of all the people, by all the people,
for all the people; of course, a government of
the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging
law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the
idea of Freedom.
Theodore Parker, speech at the N.E. Anti-
Slavery Convention, Boston (May 29, 1850).
First there is the democratic idea: that all
men are endowed by their creator with certain
natural rights; that these rights are alienable
only by the possessor thereof; that they are
equal in men; that government is to organize
these natural, unalienable and equal rights into
institutions designed for the good of the
governed, and therefore government is to be of
all the people, by all the people, and for all the
people. Here government is development, not
exploitation.
Theodore Parker, speech in Boston (May
31, 1854).
Democracy is direct self-government, over all
the people, for all the people, by all the people.
Theodore Parker, sermon delivered at
Music Hall, Boston (July 4, 1858). On the
Effect of Slavery on the American People, p.
5. (Read and underlined by Lincoln).
Slavery is in flagrant violation of the
institutions of America—direct government—over
all the people, by all the people, for all the
people.
Theodore Parker, sermon delivered at
Music Hall, Boston (July 4, 1858), p. 14.
(Read and underlined by Lincoln).
In principatu commutando civium
Nil præter domini nomen mutant pauperes.
In a change of government the poor
change nothing but the name of their
masters.
Phaedrus , Fables, I. 15. 1.
Three millions of people, so dead to all the
feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be
slaves, would have been fit instruments to make
slaves of the rest.
William Pitt (The Elder) , speech on
America.
Themistocles said, "The Athenians govern the
Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife,
govern me; your son governs you."
Plutarch, Life of Cato the Censor .
The government will take the fairest of
names, but the worst of realities—mob rule.
Polybius , VI. 57.
The right divine of kings to govern wrong.
Alexander Pope , Dunciad , Book IV, line
188. (In quotation marks, but probably his
own).
He shall rule them with a rod of iron.
Revelations, II. 27.
The labor unions shall have a square deal,
and the corporations shall have a square deal,
and in addition, all private citizens shall have a
square deal.
Theodore Roosevelt , address.
Le despotisme tempéré par l'assassinat,
c'est notre magna charta.
Despotism tempered by assassination,
that is our Magna Charta.
A Russian Noble to Count Münster on the
assassination of Paul I., Emperor of Russia.
(1800).
Say to the seceded States—Wayward sisters,
depart in peace!
Winfield Scott , letter to W. H. Seward
(March 3, 1861).
The Pope sends for him … and (says he) "We
will be merry as we were before, for thou little
thinkest what a little foolery governs the whole
world."
John Selden, Table Talk , Pope.
Invisa numquam imperia retinentur diu.
A hated government does not last long.
Seneca the Younger , Phœnissæ , VI, 60.
What a man that would be had he a particle
of gall or the least knowledge of the value of red
tape. As Curran said of Grattan, "he would have
governed the world."
Sydney Smith; of Sir John Mackintosh.
Lady Holland's Memoir , p. 245. (Ed. 4).
Men who prefer any load of infamy, however
great, to any pressure of taxation, however
light.
Sydney Smith, On American Debts .
The schoolboy whips his taxed top, the
beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with
a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying
Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has
paid seven per cent., flings himself back on his
chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per
cent., and expires in the arms of an apothecary
who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for
the privilege of putting him to death.
Sydney Smith, Review of Seybert's Annals,
United States .
Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the
small.
Edmund Spenser , The Faerie Queene
(1589-96), Book V, Canto II, Stanza 51.
Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi
imperasset.
In the opinion of all men he would have
been regarded as capable of governing, if he
had never governed.
Tacitus , Annales , I. 49.
In the parliament of man, the Federation of
the world.
Alfred Tennyson , Locksley Hall (1835,
published 1842), line 129.
Et errat longe mea quidem sententia
Qui imperium credit gravius esse aut stabilius,
Vi quod fit, quam illud quod amicitia adjungitur.
It is a great error, in my opinion, to
believe that a government is more firm or
assured when it is supported by force, than
when founded on affection.
Terence , Adelphi , I. 1. 40.
We preach Democracy in vain while Tory and
Conservative can point to the opposite side of
the Atlantic and say: "There are Nineteen
millions of the human race free absolutely,
every man heir to the throne, governing
themselves—the government of all, by all, for
all; but instead of being a consistent republic it
is one widespread confederacy of free men for
the enslavement of a nation of another
complexion."
George Thompson , M.P., speech (1851).
Hæ tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere
morem
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
This shall be thy work: to impose
conditions of peace, to spare the lowly, and
to overthrow the proud.
Virgil , Æneid (29-19 BC), VI. 852.
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and
honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of
God.
George Washington , speech to the
Constitutional Convention (1787).
A National debt is a National blessing.
Attributed to Daniel Webster, repudiated
by him. See speech (Jan. 26, 1830).
The people's government made for the
people, made by the people, and answerable to
the people.
Daniel Webster , second speech on Foot's
Resolution (Jan. 26, 1830).
When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for
the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see
him shining on the broken and dishonored
fragments of a once glorious Union; on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land
rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in
fraternal blood!
Daniel Webster , second speech on Foot's
Resolution (Jan. 26, 1830).
He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit,
and it sprung upon its feet.
Daniel Webster , speech on Hamilton
(March 10, 1831).
We have been taught to regard a
representative of the people as a sentinel on the
watch-tower of liberty.
Daniel Webster , to the Senate (May 7,
1834).
[He would do his duty as he saw it] without
regard to scraps of paper called constitutions.
King William to the Prussian Diet
disregarding the refusal of the
Representatives to grant appropriations.
Harper's Weekly, March 26, 1887. Article on
Emperor William I, of Germany.
No man ever saw the people of whom he
forms a part. No man ever saw a government. I
live in the midst of the Government of the
United States, but I never saw the Government
of the United States. Its personnel extends
through all the nations, and across the seas,
and into every corner of the world in the
persons of the representatives of the United
States in foreign capitals and in foreign centres
of commerce.
Woodrow Wilson , speech at Pittsburgh
(Jan. 29, 1916).
Wherever magistrates were appointed from
among those who complied with the injunctions
of the laws, he (Socrates) considered the
government to be an aristocracy.
Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates, Book
IV, Chapter VI.
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