Popular Government Quotes

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both ... And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.

Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.

This spirit [of Party], unfortunately, is inseperable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controuled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.

Counter insurgency is unworkable without a responsive and politically popular national government.

No Swaraj government with any pretension to being a popular government can possibly be organised and maintained on a war-footing.

A popular government wields a moral force, which is infinitely superior to the physical force that the foreign government could summon to its assistance.

The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens.

'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government.

It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.

Imperialism and popular government have nothing in common: they differ in spirit, in policy, in method.

I think [John Adams's] influence on the federal Constitution was indirect. Many including James Madison mocked the first volume of Adams's Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787. But his Massachusetts constitution was a model for those who thought about stable popular governments, with its separation of powers, its bicameral legislature, its independent judiciary, and its strong executive.

A [legal] code is almost the only blessing, perhaps it is the only blessing, which absolute governments are better fitted to confer on a nation than popular governments.

There are some despotic governments so filled with a feeling of insecurity that they regard the free life of culture as a threat to their existence. ... On the other extreme is the kind of popular government which is so distrustful of all forms of distinction that it sees even in the cultivated individual a menace to its existence. Such states are likely to maintain a pressure which discourages cultural endeavor, although the pressure may be exerted through social channels.

Popular and democratic government is the only constitution which suits France, and all those who are worthy of the name of men.

Nothing is plainer than that, if the principles of the church of Rome prevail here, our Constitution would fall. The two cannot exist together. They are in open and direct antagonism with the fundamental theory of our government and of all popular government everywhere.

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together," Pulitzer wrote. "An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.

Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

There is a long history of monetary experience. It tells us that government is at heart a counterfeiter and therefore cannot be trusted to control money, and that this is true of both autocratic and popular government.

Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you...take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This, within certain limits, is probably true, and, in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.

Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.