Georges Jacques Danton Quotes

It is with obedience to your call that I take up the burden of government leadership for the final time.

I am not at all a politician. I don't think I'm cut out for politics. I am certainly not going to stand for election.

Whenever people say, 'You should be president,' I say, 'I thought you liked me.' Listen, I thought being mayor of Stamford was a wonderful job. Being governor of a state for a period of time is a wonderful job, and I'm not sure I'm at all attracted to Washington.

Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.

I’m an elected official so I can talk at any time or any place, light or dark.

My God. What is there about this place [the White House] that a man should ever want to get into it?

Shall the majority govern or be governed? Shall the nation rule or be ruled? Shall the general will prevail, or the will of a faction? Shall there be government or no government?

In my position as prime minister, I bear the highest responsibility for decisions.

I have no political aspiration.

I tell you very openly: it's much easier to be the heavyweight champion of the world than to be the mayor of Kiev.

All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.

Between a tyrant and a prince there is this single or chief difference, that the latter obeys the law and rules the people by its dictates, accounting himself as but their servant.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.

So what is government?... Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion - such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of its offices.

Government is not infallible. Government is only an executive control, a centralized authority for the purpose of expressing the will of the people; before you have a government you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government. The government must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people.

All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire.

You can have a strong government and a weak people, or strong people and weak government, but you cannot have both.

I have not hesitated to call the system of Government under which we are labouring 'satanic' and I withdraw naught out of it.

I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency.

Government is the agent of those who are too refined to do their own mugging.

Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its being established--the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason, and never attributing authority to anything that has not the recommendation of antiquity.

The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.