Charles Darwin Quotes

Constitutional government, as designed by the framers, will survive only with a righteous people.

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.

The President of the Republic in our constitution will be like the sun which, firmly in the centre, gives life to the universe. The supreme authority must be permanent because in non-hereditary systems one needs, more than in others, a fixed point around which circle the magistrates and citizens, men and things. For a people to be free it must have a strong government which possesses sufficient means to free them from popular anarchy and the abuse of the powerful

The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

The strength of representative democracy is its ability to slow down those in power who wish to govern by blank cheque, but also those not in power who wish to yank the state about on the sole basis of their self-interest.

Representative democracy has for its characteristic object and effect…securing its members against oppression and depredation at the hands of those functionaries which it employs for its defense.

Institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both.

We must not go too far (in creating a pure Republic). A portion of Democracy should be preserved; our own children in a short time will be among the general mass.

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.

To establish republican government, it is necessary to effect a constitution in which the will of the nation shall have an organized control over the actions of its government, and its citizens a regular protection against its oppressions

In a republic, if laws are not always respectable, they are always respected.

We may define a republic to be … a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior.

Good government is the result of popular and anti-popular principles blended together, rather than of the mere ascendency of either; the aim, therefore, is to prevent either from going too far.

My father thought, and now I think too, that the system of democracy is entirely based upon the system of justice. If we do not have a system of justice that people believe in, the system of democracy will fail.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

The Founding Fathers gladly sacrificed government that could provide speedy, effective, cohesive, and internally consistent policies. They opted for one that had a maximum number of veto points and checks and balances and protections against tyranny by particular officials or tyranny by selfish majorities.

The federal constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments.

The democratic element has a fortunate effect in the political sphere when it is balanced by another force. We have this advantage over our neighbors, the Americans, who have extreme democracy.

I do not conceive God did ever ordain [democracy] as a fit government for either church or commonwealth …. As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both clearly approved and directed in the Scriptures.

A constitutional democracy like ours is perhaps the most difficult of man's social arrangements to manage successfully. Our scheme of society is more dependent than any other form of government on knowledge and wisdom and self-discipline for the achievement of its aims. For our democracy implies the reign of reason on the most extensive scale.

Constitution! Wisdom. Justice. Moderation

It is not be consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected.

No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.

Constitutional democracy is a Western idea.

A republic is little better than a government of devils