Algernon Sidney Quotes
Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty.
Sidney, Algernon. Discourses Concerning Government. Printed by J. Darby, 1698, ch. 3, sec. 25.
Some would say that the same two questions are still troubling the country.
Three Chicago Aldermen had marched on an art school demanding that a painting they found offensive be removed from public display. The police seized the painting, prompting a lawsuit.
This was an insult to the George W. Bush administration which had stretched the Constitution more so than any previous administration, had asserted Presidential powers that had never been asserted before and had had several of its more controversial policies and practices overturned by the Supreme Court.
This was the origin of John Adams famous quotation {592690}.
Algernon Sidney or Sydney was an English politician and member of the middle part of the Long Parliament. A republican political theorist, colonel, and commissioner of the trial of King Charles I of England, he opposed the king's execution. Sidney was later charged with plotting against Charles II, in part based on his most famous work, Discourses Concerning Government, which was used by the prosecution as a witness at his trial. He was executed for treason. After his death, Sidney was revered as a "Whig patriot–hero and martyr".
