Constitutional Government Quotes

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.

We are a slack people but deeply destructive … I think that a constitutional regime would mean the end of Russia. We need a despot!

There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government.

We can not have free government without elections. And if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have conquered or ruined us.

When your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from America-- when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause … For myself I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and observation … that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion … no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the Congress at Philadelphia. I trust that it is obvious to your lordships, that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal.

The Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact created them as States.

An elective despotism [i.e. of the Congress] was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

A free and democratic society is not the norm. When you look to the history books, world history was not based on great democratic societies but on imperialism, absolute rule, kings, queens, monarchs, dictators.

As the people of the United States enjoy the great merit of having established a system of Government on the basis of human rights, and of giving it a form without example, which, as they believe, unites the greatest national strength with the best security for public order and individual liberty, they owe to themselves, to their posterity and to the world, a preservation of the system in its purity, its symmetry, and its authenticity.

The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity. When they assembled, the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity.

This country is a republic.

Political ambition, like other kinds of ambition, is a basic human appetite …. Like other human appetites, ambition is not evenly distributed among the population, but enough people with substantial political ambition are naturally drawn to political careers to make the problem of controlling it a major aspect of constitutional government.

… all kinds of government are defective…. sagacious legislators, knowing the vices of each of these systems of government by themselves, have chosen one that should partake of all of them, judging that to be the most stable and solid. In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.

Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U.S., any government of Constitution and laws, wherein a General, or President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?

Democracy must be a sound scheme at bottom, else it would not survive such cruel strains.

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

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.

We are a democratic - we are living in democracy.

The United States supports the idea that every people should have the right to make a free choice as to the kind of government they want.

I used to have a great fear of constitutional conventions. I have a great fear now of not having one.

Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.

Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand.

The path to democratic capitalism ended the previous world order of empires..

No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue.