Politics & Power Quotes — page 169

The encroachments upon liberty in the reigns of the first James and the first Charles, by turning the general attention of learned men to government, are said to have produced the greatest number of consummate statesmen which has ever been …

When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then …

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the …

it is always a delusive freedom, founded on a servitude more or less disguised.

In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!

The best exponent of anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno

If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority.

Political institutions are a superstructure on the economic foundation.

Let the bar proclaim, "the laws, the rights, the generous plan of power" delivered down from remote antiquity, inform the world of the mighty struggles and numberless sacrifices made by our ancestors in defense of freedom.

There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people, who feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts …

According to the prevailing doctrine, which derives power from the people, and deposits it ultimately in their hands, the state is omnipotent over the individual, whose only remnant of freedom is then the participation in the exercise of …

Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all.

A basic condition for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organisation of comprehensive political exposure.

Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. Let every order and degree among the people rouse their attention and animate their resolution.

that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations

The Catholic notion, defining liberty not as the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought, denies that general interests can supersede individual rights. It condemns, therefore, the theory of the

Revolutionary Social-Democracy has always included the struggle for reforms as part of its activities. But it utilises “economic” agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but …

the spirit of liberty is as ardent as ever among the body of the nation, though a few individuals may be corrupted.

In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of …

Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.

The English constitution was excellent until removed by foreign writers into the domain of theory, when in direct contradiction with its nature and origin it came to be admired as a common representative government.

This fear of criticism displayed by the advocates of freedom of criticism cannot be attributed solely to craftiness. No, the majority of the Economists look with sincere resentment upon all theoretical controversies, factional …