Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

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

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

A popular assembly without parties--500 isolated individuals--cannot stand five years against a Minister with an organized Government without becoming a servile Senate.

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.

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it.

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

A republic - if you can keep it - is about limitation, and for good reason, because we are mortal and our actions are imperfect.

Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle, but it pointed in the direction of a constructive formula.

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

The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power.

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.

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.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

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.

Form such a national government that we think best adapted for the good of the whole.

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.

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.

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

We are still wrestling with a question that plagued the founding fathers: how to balance the role of the federal government with the separate powers of the states that constitute the republic.

The infinitely wise and good Being has given us the sum and substance of the most perfect form of civil government in his word.... I mean that ancient plan of civil policy, delineated for the chosen tribes of Israel. In that divinely authorized constitution, we find no king, no despot, no emperor, no tyrant, no perpetual dictator allowed of.

Good government is the preservation of liberty, which in turn requires the absence of arbitrary, discretionary power in the chief magistrate.

The Constitution is not just a legal argument. It is a set of norms and practices and it’s a political document…

Let all Americans sit down and read this great document. Since the Constitution's ratification, it has been the framework for our great nation.