government Quotes

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.