Free Institutions Quotes

Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of over weening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.

To their duty to God, youth should realize their duty to our country. They should love and honor the Constitution of the United States, the basic concepts and principles upon which this nation has been established. Yes, they need to develop a love for our free institutions.

The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion. In a free society these institutions must be wholly free—which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.

The war has proved that our free government, like other free governments, though slow in its early movements, acquires in its progress a force proportioned to its freedom.

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

The highest test of a people's fitness for free institutions is their willingness to obey law.

Were there no contrariety of interests, nothing would be more simple and easy than to form and preserve free institutions. The right of suffrage alone would be a sufficient guarantee. It is the conflict of opposing interests which renders it the most difficult work of man.

When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.

It is not much to be wondered at if impatient or disappointed reformers, groaning under the impediments opposed to the most salutary public improvements by the ignorance, the indifference, the intractableness, the perverse obstinacy of a people, and the corrupt combinations of selfish private interests armed with the powerful weapons afforded by free institutions, should at times sigh for a strong hand to bear down all these obstacles, and compel a recalcitrant people to be better governed.

Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense—the sheerest mockery.

I think the negro (sic) is included in the word “men” used in the Declaration of Independence – I believe the declaration that “all men are created equal” is the great fundamental principal upon which are free institutions rest.

The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions.

One hundred years ago free schools were little known in the United States. There were excellent schools for the well-to-do and charitable institutions for the instruction of boys and girls without means; but the free public school, open alike to the children of the rich and poor and supported by the State, awaited creation and development. The seed planted soon bore fruit. Free schools were the necessary supplement of free men. The wise and liberal provisions for public instruction by the fathers, second only in effect to their struggle for the independence and creation of the Union, were destined at no distant date to produce the most wonderful results.

We, too, are Americans.. On us, as well as on them [the United States], lies the duty of preserving the honor of the continent. On us, as on them, rests the noble trust of shielding free institutions.

Unquestionably a military government, established as the permanent government for the State, would not be a republican government, and it would be the duty of Congress to overthrow it. But the law of Rhode Island evidently contemplated no such government. It was intended merely for the crisis, and to meet the peril in which the existing government was placed by the armed resistance to its authority. It was so understood and construed by the State authorities. And unquestionably a State may use its military power to put down an armed insurrection too strong to be controlled by the civil authority. The power is essential to the existence of every government, essential to the preservation of order and free institutions, and is as necessary to the States of this Union as to any other government. The State itself must determine what degree of three the crisis demands.

Men may die, but the fabric of free institutions remain unshaken.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our revolution. They existed before.

I am aware how difficult is the task to preserve free institutions over so wide a space and so immense a population, but we are blessed with a Constitution admirably calculated to accomplish it. Its elastic power is unequaled, which is to be attributed to its federal character.

I am forced to make a rule not to write letters on the occasion of any celebration, no matter how important, simply because I can not write one without either committing myself to write hundreds of others or else running the risk of giving offense to worthy persons. I make as exception in this case because the lamentable and terrible suffering to which so many of the Jewish people in other lands have been subject to express my deep sympathy for them, as I now do, but at the same time to point out what fine qualities of citizenship have been displayed by the men of Jewish faith and race, who, having come to this country, enjoy the benefits of free institutions and equal treatment before the law… in the spiritual world that no one can wrong others and yet in the end himself escape unhurt… Jews of the United States, who now number more than a million, have remained loyal to their faith and their race traditions, they have become indissolubly incorporated in the great army of American citizenship, prepared to make all sacrifice for the country, either in War or peace, and striving for the perpetuation of good government and for the maintenance of the principles embodied in the Constitution. They are honorably distinguished by their industry, their obedience to law, and their devotion to the national welfare.

An evil and a reproach to our municipality, for which the laws and ordinances afford no adequate remedy. I allude to the constantly increasing number of vagrants, idle and vicious children of both sexes, who infest our public thoroughfares, hotels, docks, &c.; children who are growing up in ignorance and profligacy, only destined to a life of misery, shame and crime, and ultimately to a felon's doom. Their numbers are almost incredible, and to those whose business and habits do not permit them a searching scrutiny, the degrading and disgusting practices of these almost infants, in the school of vice, prostitution and rowdyism, would certainly be beyond belief… they never see the inside of a schoolroom; and so far as our excellent system of public education is concerned, and which may be truly said to be the foundation stone of our free institutions, is to them an entire nullity. Left in many instances to roam day and night wherever their inclination leads them, a large proportion of these juvenile vagrants are in the daily practice of pilfering wherever opportunity offers, and begging when they cannot steal.

Free institutions certainly exist, but a tradition of passivity and conformism restricts their use - a cynic might say that this is why they continue to exist.

The railways of the world, except in those countries where they have been held under the strict regulation and supervision of the government, have proved themselves arbitrary, extortionate and as opposed to free institutions and free commerce between states as were the feudal barons of the middle ages.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

Present day American capitalism—for all our misgivings about it—at least leaves room for free institutions to flower and survive.