Political Leaders

"All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty."

"An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters."

"The gentleman cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.""

"Impart additional strength to our happy Union. Diversified as are the interests of its various parts, how admirably do they harmonize and blend together! We have only to make a proper use of the bounties spread before us, to render us prosperous and powerful."

"Sir, if you wish to avoid foreign commerce; give up all your prosperity. It is the thing protected, not the instrument of protection, that involves you in war. Commerce engenders collision, collision war, and war, the argument supposes, leads to despotism. Would the councils of that statesman be deemed who would recommend that the nation should be unarmed—that in the art of war, the material spirit, and martial exercises, should be prohibited—…—and that the great body of the people should be taught that the national happiness was to be found in perpetual peace alone? No, sir."

"If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean."

"The great advantage of our system of government over all others, is, that we have a written constitution, defining its limits, and prescribing its authorities; and that, however, for a time, faction may convulse the nation, and passion and party prejudice sway its functionaries, the season of reflection will recur, when calmly retracing their deeds, all aberrations from fundamental principle will be corrected."

"In all cases where incidental powers are acted upon, the principal and incidental ought to be congenial with each other, and partake of a common nature. The incidental power ought to be strictly subordinate and limited to the end proposed to be obtained by the specified power. In other words, under the name of accomplishing one object which is specified, the power implied ought not to be made to embrace other objects, which are not specified in the constitution."

"What is the nature of this government? It is emphatically federal, vested with an aggregate of special powers for general purposes, conceded by existing sovereignties, who have themselves retained what is not so conceded. It is said that there are cases in which it must act on implied powers. This is not controverted, but the implication must be necessary, and obviously flow from enumerated power with which it is allied."

"I am not, sir, in favor of cherishing the passion of conquest. I am permitted … to indulge the hope of seeing, ere long, the new United States, (if you will allow me the expression,) embracing not only the old …."

"It consists in the genius of the nation, which is prone to peace; in that desire to arrange, by friendly negotiation, our disputes with all nations…. But a new state of things has arisen: negotiation has become hopeless. The power with whom it was to be conducted, if not annihilated, is in the situation that precludes it; and the subject-matter of it is in danger of being snatched forever from our power. Longer delay would be construed into a dereliction of our right, and would amount to a treachery to ourselves."

"Whether we assert our rights by sea, or attempt their maintenance by land—whithersoever we turn ourselves, this phantom incessantly pursues us. Already has it had too much influence on the councils of the nation."

"I have no commiseration for princes. My sympathies are reserved for the great mass of mankind …."

"In countries like ours, women enter politics in mourning clothes."

"How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!"

"The Indian-fighting frontiersmen and the "valiant" settlers in their circled covered wagons are the iconic images of that identity. The continued popularity of, and respect for, the genocidal sociopath Andrew Jackson is another indicator. Actual men such as Robert Rogers, Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and David Crockett, as well as fictitious ones created by James Fenimore Cooper and other best-selling writers, call to mind D. H. Lawrence's "myth of the essential white American"-that the "essential American soul" is a killer."

"Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers."

"He is gone from among us, and is no more to be seen in the walks of men, but in his death like Sampson, he slew more of his enemies than in all his life. Even his most bitter enemies here, I believe, have buried all animosity, and join the general lamentation over his untimely end."

"Born on a mountain top in Tennessee Greenest state in the land of the free Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree Kilt him a b'ar when he was only three Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier! Fought single-handed through the Injun War Til' the Creeks was whipped an' peace was in store And while he was handlin' this risky chore He made hisself a legend forever more Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!"

"The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrours, without shrinking or complaining: not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit."

"Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!"

"In peace or in war I have stood by thy side — My country, for thee I have lived, would have died! But I am cast off, my career now is run, And I wander abroad like the prodigal son — Where the wild savage roves, and the broad prairies spread, The fallen — despised — will again go ahead."

"Happiness is a new idea in Europe."

"I am not of any faction, I will fight them all."

"It is not enough, citizens, to have destroyed the factions, it is necessary now to repair the evil that they have done to the country."

"Let Revolutionists be Romans, not Tatars."

"Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution."

"Citizens, by what illusion could one persuade himself that you are inhuman. Your Revolutionary Tribunal has condemned three hundred rascals to death in a year. Has not the Spanish Inquisition done worse than that ... Have the English assizes butchered no one in that period? ... What of the kings of Europe, does anyone prate to them of pity? Ah, do not allow yourselves to grow soft-hearted!"

"In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue."

"The French people recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. The first day of every month is to be dedicated to the eternal."

"When human statecraft attaches a chain to the feet of a free man, whom it makes a slave in contempt of nature and citizenship, eternal justice rivets the other end about the tyrant's neck."

"What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon ... The Revolution must stop itself at the perfection of public happiness and liberty through the laws."

"The Revolution is frozen; all its principles are weakened; there remains only red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has made crime blasé, as strong liquors made the palace blasé."

"I despise the dust that forms me and speaks to you. This dust you may persecute and kill, but I defy you to rob me of that independent life I have given myself down through the ages and in the heavens...."

"Insurrection is the exclusive right of the people and of the citizen. Every foreigner, every man clothed with public authority, is outlawed if he proposes it and must be put to death as a usurper of sovereignty and as interested in fomenting troubles for the purpose of doing evil or of adorning himself. Insurrections taking place under a despotism are always salutary. Those which break out in a free state are sometimes dangerous for liberty itself, because the revolt usurps its sublime pretexts and its sacred name. Revolts in free states leave long and painful wounds which bleed a whole century."

"A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses."

"In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself ... The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace."

"The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery."

"Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters."

"It has always seemed to me that the social order was implicit in the very nature of things, and required nothing more from the human spirit than care in arranging the various elements; that a people could be governed without being made thralls or libertines or victims thereby; that man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt."

"I have not found a single good man in government; I have found good only in the people."

"Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own tombs."

"It is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. Legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun."

"One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper."

"Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong."

"Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws everything is sterile and dead."

"When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete."

"You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work."

"There is absolutely no doubt that our future as a nation, lies in drawing strength from the richness of the cultural diversity that surrounds us, for in that alone lies our sustainability and viability as a sovereign state."

"Laisenia Qarase, Prime Minister since 2000: "(These protests) are led by a man who has been convicted by the Suva magistrate’s court for causing the death of a person. Mr Chaudhry himself was convicted sometime back for manslaughter and he was released from prison only three days after serving his sentence on a CSO (Compulsory Supervision Order)." (accusing Chaudhry of hypocrisy for campaigning against the early release of politicians jailed for their part in the 2000 coup)."