"Our present political position has been achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations. It illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established."

"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy."

"The genius of Republican liberty, seems to demand on one side, not only that all power should be derived from the people; but, that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people, by a short duration of their appointments; and, that, even during this short period, the trust should be placed not in a few, but in a number of hands. Stability, on the contrary, requires, that the hands, in which power is lodged, should continue for a length of time, the same. A frequent change of men will result from a frequent return of electors, and a frequent change of measures, from a frequent change of men; whilst energy in Government requires not only a certain duration of power, but the execution of it by a single hand."

"The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. If we are to have a billion dollars of navy, half a billion of farm relief, [etc.] … the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go."

"Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man who has power is inclined to abuse it; he goes until he finds limits. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?. To prevent this abuse, it is necessary that, by the arrangement of things, power shall stop power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits."

"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."

"I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor."

"Though the people support the government the government should not support the people."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There are but two ways of paying debt—increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out."

"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?"

"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."

"Nothing's more dull and negligent Than an old, lazy government, That knows no interest of state, But such as serves a present strait."

"When bad men combine, the good must associate."

"And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them."

"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."

"I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for Reform,—thirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party."

"England is the mother of parliaments."

""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."

"Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring A Church without a bishop, a State without a King."

"It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king."

"Adeo ut omnes imperii virga sive bacillum vere superius inflexum sit."

"States are great engines moving slowly."

"Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely."

"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."

"For where's the State beneath the Firmament, That doth excell the Bees for Government?"

"Yet if thou didst but know how little wit governs this mighty universe."

"Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, he (Socrates) considered the government to be an aristocracy."

"We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty."

"He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet."

"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."

"[He would do his duty as he saw it] without regard to scraps of paper called constitutions."

"The people's government made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people."

"A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy."

"Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may blunder or plunder."

"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!"

"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."

"Et errat longe mea quidem sententia Qui imperium credit gravius esse aut stabilius, Vi quod fit, quam illud quod amicitia adjungitur."

"In the parliament of man, the Federation of the world."

"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.""

"Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small."

"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."

"They have proved themselves offensive partisans and unscrupulous manipulators of local party management."

"Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset."

"Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people."

"Invisa numquam imperia retinentur diu."

"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.""