Fisher Ames Quotes

Between a conservative republic and a constitutional monarchy there is merely a difference in form.

Republics, like other forms of government, exist in history and can rise and fall.

The rule of law is a republic. The rule of one person is a monarchy.

There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.

In my opinion, the form of Government may be different in different countries, according to their circumstances, their wishes, their wants. England loves her Queen, and has full motive to do so.

The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.

A country can live under a monarchy or a republic, with a parliamentary or a presidential system, under communism or fascism. But it cannot live in anarchy.

As for us BRITONS, thank Heaven, we have a better Sense of Government deliver’d to us from our Ancestors. We have the Notion of A PUBLIC and A CONSTITUTION; how a Legislative, and how an Executive is model’d.

When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.

There's not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I'm not anti-democracy, but there's no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

This Republic was called into being, organized, and is upheld, by a great political doctrine.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island have originally realized the most perfect polity as to a legislature.

God leaves to Man the choice of Forms in Government; and those who constitute one Form, may abrogate it.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

The sovereignty of republics is an historical inevitability.

It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or counsuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is a legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa.

The founding fathers set up this country as a republic—not a democracy.

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy no one has his way.

I am sensible that there are defects in our federal government, yet they are so much lighter than those of monarchies, that I view them with much indulgence. I rely, too, on the good sense of the people for remedy, whereas the evils of monarchical government are beyond remedy. If any of our countrymen wish for a King, give them Aesop's fable of the frogs who asked a King; if this does not cure them, send them to Europe. They will go back good republicans.

The existence of parties is not necessary to a free government.

What constitutes a republic is the total destruction of everything that stands in opposition to it.

Polities need written constitutions for two reasons -- either to link constituent units in a federal system or to republicanize absolutism

We’ve come pretty far on this old, rickety, 18th century, political system, and I for one like it.

The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity. When they assembled, the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity.

Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it.