Simon Bolivar Quotes

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

The greatest of all evils is a weak government.

There is a rich and haughty King who is blessed with such neighbours as are not likely to disturb him and has nothing to fear from his miserable subjects; but the whole body of that state is full of boils and wounds and putrid sores. There is no real strength in it. The people are so unwilling to serve him that he is said to have put to death above fourscore thousand of his own soldiers within the space of fifteen years for flying from their colours, and if he were vigorously attacked, little help could be expected from a discontented nobility or a starving and despairing people.

This (the U.S. Constitution) is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other

Terrorism can go anywhere where there is not strong government, or government that cannot control its hinterlands.

The Shah is a nut!

… most republics through history have eventually collapsed, degenerated into tyranny, or were overthrown.

Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all societies eventually will.

By terrorising the people, the Taliban have sown deep doubts about the government.

The situation of the general government, if it can be called a government, is shaken to its foundation, and liable to be overturned by every blast.

There be three sorts of government--monarchical, aristocratical, democratical; and they are apt to fall three several ways into ruin--the first, by tyranny; the second, by ambition; the last, by tumults. A commonwealth grounded upon any one of these is not of long continuance; but, wisely mingled, each guards the other and makes that government exact.

Repression breeds hate; hate menaces stable government.

A hated government does not long survive.

In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.

Pakistan is a nation, which, if it falls apart, if it becomes a failed state, there are nuclear weapons there and you've got terrorists there who could grab their hands onto those nuclear weapons.

Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism - free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.

The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

They think democracy - I used to say "damn the democracy", because it's not a stable government.

A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free.

Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.

Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.