Quotes about Government

A] partial repeal, or, as the bon ton of the court then was, a modification, would have satisfied a timid, unsystematic, procrastinating Ministry, as such a measure has since done such a Ministry. A modificatio is the constant resource of weak, undeciding minds.

Religion, by 'consecrating' the state, gives the people an added impetus to respect and regard their regime.

It was not English arms, but the English Constitution, that conquered Ireland.

Those despotic governments which are founded on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of religion.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.

There is no qualification for government, but virtue and wisdom, whether actual or presumptive. . . . Every thing ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man.

The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.

The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are both to be reckoned among their rights.

Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep,—to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy,—to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.

There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.