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Despotism tempered by assassination, that is our Magna Carta.
[Fr., Le despotisme tempere par l'assassinat, c'est notre magna
charta.]
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: said by a Russian noble to Count Munster on the assassination of Paul I, emperor of Russia
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Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring
A Church without a bishop, a State without a King.
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: Puritan's Mistake
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A government of laws, and not of men.
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: Puritan's Mistake
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Fear is the foundation of most governments.
Author: John Adams
Source: Thoughts on Government
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The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made
by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an
insult.
Author: John Quincy Adams
Source: in an address to the citizens of Westmoreland County, Virginia
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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.
Author: John Quincy Adams
Source: in a letter to Mrs. Adams
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. . . The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to
determine whether a republican government is practicable in a
nation or not.
Author: John Quincy Adams
Source: Diary
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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.
Author: John Quincy Adams
Source: Diary
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States are great engines moving slowly.
Author: Francis Bacon
Source: Advancement of Learning (bk. II)
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So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top.
[Lat., Adeo ut omnes imperii virga sive bacillum vere superius
inflexum sit.]
Author: Francis Bacon
Source: De Sapientia Veterum (6, Pan, sive Natura)
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It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a
government without a king.
Author: George Bancroft
Source: History of the United States (vol. III, ch. VI)
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Yet if thou didst but know how little wit governs this mighty
universe.
Author: Mrs. Aphra Johnson Behn
Source: Comedy of the Rounded Heads (act I, sc. 2)
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"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.
Author: Richard Bentley
Source: Declaration of Rights
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And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him
will I give power over the nations:
And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a
potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my
Father.
Author: Bible
Source: Revelations (ch. II, v. 26-27)
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Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good
or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is
contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds
contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto
himself; it invites anarchy.
Author: Louis D. Brandeis
Source: part of his dissent in the case "Olmstead v. United States", 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928)
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England is the mother of parliaments.
Author: John Bright
Source: in a speech at Birmingham, England
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I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for Reform,--thirty years
ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party.
Author: John Bright
Source: in a speech at Birmingham, England
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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.
Author: John Bright
Source: in a speech at Rochdale, England
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So then because some towns in England are not represented,
America is to have no representative at all. They are "our
children"; but when children ask for bread we are not to give a
stone.
Author: John Bright
Source: in a speech at Rochdale, England
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All government--indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every
virtue and every prudent act--is founded on compromise and
barter.
Author: Edmund Burke
Source: Second Speech on Conciliation with America
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And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first
scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
Author: Edmund Burke
Source: Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (vol. V, p. 156)
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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will
fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible
struggle.
Author: Edmund Burke
Source: Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent
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Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may
blunder or plunder.
Author: Sir Richard Francis Burton
Source: Explorations of the Highroads of Brazil (I, p. 11)
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Nothing's more dull and negligent
Than an old, lazy government,
That knows no interest of state,
But such as serves a present strait.
Author: Samuel Butler (1)
Source: Miscellaneous Thoughts (l. 159)
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A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Childe Harold (canto II, st. 84)
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We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.
Author: Dave Barry
Source: None
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A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.
Author: Benjamin L. Hooks
Source: None
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The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
Author: William E. Borah
Source: None
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A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.
Author: George Washington
Source: None
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Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.
Author: Edmund Burke
Source: None
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A government is not an old pair of socks that you throw away.
Author: Boris Yeltsin
Source: None
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Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
Author: George Burns
Source: None
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A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
Author: Otto von Bismarck
Source: None
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The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
Author: W. E. Channing
Source: None
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A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
Author: Barry Goldwater
Source: None
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Truth is the glue that holds government together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.
Author: Gerald R. Ford
Source: None
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A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
Author: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Source: None
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Which government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Source: None
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I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labour of the industrious.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: None
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Author: Henry Louis Mencken
Source: None
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Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth.
Author: Henry Louis Mencken
Source: None
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The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
Author: Henry Louis Mencken
Source: None
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Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
Author: William Penn
Source: None
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Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.
Author: Wendell Phillips
Source: None
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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.
Author: George Greenville
Source: None
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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 ...
Author: George Hoadly
Source: None
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The true art of government consists in not governing too much.
Author: Jonathan Shipley
Source: None
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Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
Author: William Penn
Source: None
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Franklin Roosevelt stands like a sharply formed rock in a shapeless sea.
spoken on Book TV by a Jackson biographer.
Author: Justice Robert Jackson
Source: None
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Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.
Author: Cullen Hightower
Source: None
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