Fisher Ames Quotes

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

Lycurgus being asked why he, who in other respects appeared to be so zealous for the equal rights of men, did not make his government democratical rather than oligarchical, "Go you," replied the legislator, "and try a democracy in your own house.

I would consider myself to be a moderate Republican, but more important than that, I believe our system of government is the best system there is... and while I have no illusions of changing the world, I've had good opportunities in life, and I believe there's an obligation to give something back by participating.

Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.

What brought Conservatism into existence was the French Revolution.

I cannot answer your question because I am neither a Democrat or a Republican. I am a constitutional monarchy.

Never test the depth of river with both the feet.

I have the distinction of speaking to you from one of the few countries that still has a communist party.

As an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism.

Safety is relative. You can be so close to shore that you can practically feel it under your feet, when you suddenly find yourself breaking apart on the rocks.

Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical.

When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.

A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.

Politics is an obsolete way of doing things. Although it was good a hundred years ago, it has no place in today's high tech society.

I'm not an anarchist. I'm not saying, "Burn it to the ground."

Gentl, I am a party man. I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible. I look upon Parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly the one most suited to England.

Mr Jefferson meant that the American system should be a democracy, and he would rather have let the whole world perish than that this principle, which to him represented all that man was worth, should fail. Mr Hamilton considered democracy a fatal curse, and meant to stop its progress.

[John] Adams was arguing that a separate social order existed that needed to be embodied in senates and his fellow Americans could not accept this and accused him rightly of being obsessed with the English constitution.

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

I have not hesitated to call the system of Government under which we are labouring 'satanic' and I withdraw naught out of it.

If you consider, for example, that democracy is much like a religion then 9/11 is akin to finding the body of God.

Never will we be able to understand our times if we naively 'think' of this system of self Government as the work of a few gangsters or the creation of a pack of criminals we call a political party. The appeal of Socialism, Fascism and communism was principally negative; they were protests against a live and let live anything goes liberalism, a spineless indifference to causes, a failure to recognize that nothing was evil enough to hate, and nothing was good enough to die for.

There are but two sorts of government: one where men show their teeth at each other, and one where men show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest.

A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have