Politics & Power Quotes — page 9

Man's legal rights are everywhere in collision with man's natural rights; hence the deep-rooted and wide-spread unrest of modern civilization. The only sacred right of property is the natural right of the working man to the product, which …

The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people. Freedom of the press, too.

The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

I have sometimes thought it one of the chief drawbacks on modern democracy that, while it gives birth to despotism with the greatest facility, it does not seem to be capable of producing aristocracy, though from that form of political and …

When we join our fortunes to hers, we shall not become subjects, but fellow citizens possessing all the rights of the people of the United States

Democracy is a great spiritual force evolving itself from men, utilizing each, completing his incompleteness by weaving together all in the many-membered community life which is the true Theophany. The world today is growing more …

To a reluctant admission of the necessity for State action, we join a burning belief in duty, and a deep spiritual ideal of life.

The fortune of war has thrown me into the hands of Government, and I am utterly ignorant of what fate may attend me, but in the worst event I hope I shall bear it like a man, and that my death will not disgrace my life.

No man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.

The primary object of all government at the present moment is to maintain the Union, to maintain it not for a session or for a Parliament, but for our time.

If a nation does not want a monarchy, change the nation’s mind. If a nation does not need a monarchy, change the nation’s needs.

The binding power of custom is its security of expectations. What has happened before may be expected to happen again, and he who arbitrarily disappoints expectations must be restrained or punished.

Are we, in this age of civilization and political progress... to roll back the whole current of human thought, and again return to the mere brute force which prevails between beasts of prey, as the only method of settling questions between …

"Politics means a strong slow drilling of hard boards, with passion and judgment at the same time." (German: "Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich.")

We have had good and bad Presidents, and it is a consoling reflection that the American Nation possesses such elements of prosperity that the bad Presidents cannot destroy it, and have been able to do no more than slightly to retard the …

The government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic Party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery.

Wednesday, Coronation-day, King Charles took his journey northward, against the Scottish covenanting rebels. God of His infinite mercy bless him with health and success.

It was impossible to reconcile the repeal of the Corn Laws by me with the keeping together of the Conservative party, and I had no hesitation in sacrificing the subordinate object, and with it my own political interests.

justice is not fulfilled so long as woman is unequal before the law. We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own …

Men who hold the rod over slaves rule in the councils of the nation; and they deny our right to petition and remonstrate against abuses of our sex and our kind.

I have never understood why Catholics of culture take pains to deny or to explain away the fact that the Roman Church is not only a religion but also a secular system of government, and that the Church as representative of God upon earth …

If I run as the regular Republican nominee, I may go down to defeat if a bolt is started by Roosevelt, but I will retain the regular organization of the party as a nucleus about which the conservative people who are in favor of maintaining …

To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question.

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.