Politics & Power Quotes — page 8

In Massachusetts, where properly qualified "persons" were allowed to practice law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a "person," and a special act of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be …

How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors...

It would be well to begin with telepathy; with the fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of the recognized organs of sense — that knowledge may enter …

An ardent affection for the human race makes enthusiastic characters eager to produce alteration in laws and governments prematurely. To render them useful and permanent, they must be the growth of each particular soil, and the gradual …

King William asked Mr. Locke how long he thought the revolution principles might last in England. The philosopher answered, "Till this generation shall have passed away, and our universities shall have had time to breed a new one." Many …

That charge [stealing over 200 horses] has never been proved against me, and it is held in English law that a man is innocent until proven guilty.

As for myself, what more can I say? I am bitterly censured for having refused to give my country a strategic frontier. How can I take seriously those who, both great and small, reproach me with this, since they know that I could not—apart …

Whatever change may take place you must have better pretensions, I presume, to intitle yourself to its advantages than a set of political and religious opinions; unless you think it sufficient to emulate the bons citoyens who make it their …

Rex & Tyrannus are very different Characters: One Rules his People by Laws, to which they consent; the other by his absolute Will and Power.

the people are answerable only to God; — themselves being the losers, if they pursue a false scheme of politics.

The greater the share the people have in government, the less liberty, civil or religious, does a nation enjoy.

And now we beseech of Thee that we may have every day some such sense of God's mercy and of the power of God about us, as we have of the fullness of the light of heaven before us.

In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is …

Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing …

The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to …

He sees that this great roundabout The world, with all its motley rout, Church, army, physic, law, Its customs and its businesses, Is no concern at all of his, And says—what says he?—Caw.

But metre itself implies a passion, i.e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.

How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike,

Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.

In the kingdome of blind men the one-ey'd is king.

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero.

All that necessarily results from an analysis of our institutions, and a comparison of them with the institutions of foreign countries, is, that the English constitution is still marked, far more deeply than is generally supposed, by …

I cannot see but that, according to the principles this day announced, such state legislation, although conceived in hostility to, and enacted for the purpose of humiliating, citizens of the United States of a particular race, would be …

Equality before the law of all men, no matter where they born, or from what race they sprung, is the sentiment of the people.