Massachusetts Quotes

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.

For more than 500 years -- since the rise of nation-states and parliaments -- a preoccupation of Western political thought has been the problem of defining and confining executive power.

That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all amenable to them.

The power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the People.

It was to guard against the encroachment of power, the insatiate ambition of wealth that this government was instituted by the people themselves.

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 Federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers and designed for different purposes…. The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone.

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

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.

As I understand the American Founders, the most brilliant and daring idea they had was that it's possible to create a free society that could stay free forever.

We have come from the divine right of kings to the divine right of 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.

The fountain of power remaineth most eminently in the people; therefore it is unlimited in the people, and bounded and limited in the king, and so less in the king than in the people.

A President in a sense is an elected kingship.

Would it not be easier...for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?

The English constitution is founded on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority and making it good.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.

Our sovereign, the people.

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.

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.

Resolved-1st, That the People are the source of all legitimate power; and, That We are the People.

We admit to no government by divine right.

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

The people are gainers by the election of representatives. They may destroy, but they cannot exercise, the powers of government in person, but by their servants they govern: they do not renounce their power; they do not sacrifice their rights; they become the true sovereigns of the country when they delegate that power, which they cannot use themselves to their trustees.