Benjamin Constant Quotes

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well but will sometimes strike on a rock. A republic is a raft that will never sink.

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.

In republics the executive must be strongest because everything conspires against it, while in monarchies the legislature must be strongest, because everything conspires in favour of the monarch

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

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.

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

The growth of constitutional government, as we now understand it, was promoted by the establishment of two different sets of machinery for making laws and carrying on government.

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

The king, in possession of the throne, was the sole representative of sovereignty, the sole representative of power. Not so in a Republic … Here we have no sole representative of power. The ballot box is the instrumentality through which the sovereign power is exercised.

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

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

The transformation of the United States from a traditional republic to a democratic nation run in large measure by a single executive took a couple of hundred years.

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

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.

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.

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.

By a single Executive, there will be danger of Monarchy or Tyranny. If the Executive consist of three persons, they may act without danger. If of one, he will be dependent on the Legislatures & cannot be impeached till the Expiration of his Office. A single Executive is against the Genius of America.

A republic is little better than a government of devils

We owe our present happiness and prosperity, which has never been equaled in the annals of mankind, to a mixture of monarchical government.

I suppose that the community, so far as this island is concerned, would not sink into chaos if this was a republic and not a monarchy; but in my opinion the Empire would sink into chaos. You could not have at the head of an Empire, so peculiarly constituted as ours is, a President elected, let us say, as the President of the United States is, every four years—the creation, or at all events the choice of a party, changing many times in the lifetime of every individual, and representing the abstraction of a Constitution and not the personal head of an Empire. You could never direct the Empire on that principle simply because, if you insisted on having an elected President in this country, he would be elected by the electorate of this country and not by the electorate of the Crown or of the Crown Colonies.

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

Democracy sounded well and good, but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a more practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man, than to find many of them.

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

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