Republic Quotes

We have collected and put the best republic quotes about the meaning of life from around the world. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

May these republic quotes on many subjects inspire you to never give up and keep working towards your goals. Who knows—success could be just around the corner.

republic is a form of government in which affairs of state are a “public matter” (Latin: res publica), not the private concern of the rulers, in which public offices are consequently appointed or elected rather than privately accommodated (i.e., through inheritance or divine mandate). In modern times, the common definition of a republic is a government which excludes a monarch.

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Republic means rule based on the people’s election and consultation. The first book to teach this principal fully is the Qur’an. Saying that republican rule is contrary to the Qur’an, if done without bad intentions, shows a lack of knowledge. Supporting the republic but refusing to see its source is just plain stubbornness. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, did not claim kingship, and his four immediate political successors followed his example. Kingship appeared when people grew remote from the Islamic spirit, and eventually this digression became a vehicle for oppression and despotism. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Based on true freedom and justice, a true republic is an elevated and safe form of rule. However, it is also an extremely tender system. If this aspect is not considered properly, atheism and anarchy will appear and grow in its heart. – M. Fethullah Gulen

A true republic is a form of rule by elevated spirits and is the most suitable for humanity’s honor. Immature spirits and those with no understanding of the ways to human perfection consider it a mirage, a temporary bower that offers no shelter. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The republic can be the mother or governess of freedom, for it nurtures and raises the generations in love with freedom. It is a government of freedom, virtue, and morality, and not a rule of “loose” freedom. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The republic provides a foundation that elevates us with uplifting values. Later it leaves us alone with our elevated morality and alert conscience. Finally recognizing ourselves as human beings with will power, we always think good and virtuous thoughts and follow high human values at home and at work. – M. Fethullah Gulen

As our spirit, which has an innate desire for freedom, rejects all forms of domination, it reacts to any limits to be placed on its freedom of thought, behavior, and expression. For this reason, while a republican government allows individuals broad rights and freedoms on the one hand, it must, on the other, educate them as people of elevated morality and virtue, and sound thinking and strong will. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The republic is obligated to protect its citizens’ religious faith, feelings and thoughts. If its leaders do not do so, but rather hold people in contempt because of their religious feelings and thoughts, violate their rights, and smear their good names, in reality they are holding the republic in contempt and violating all that it represents. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The republic needs people who fully identify with its principles. Its governing body should be dignified and wise, and its works should be fair and just. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Fethullah Gulen Quotes

Fethullah Gulen Quotes

Republic of the West, Enlightened, free, sublime, Unquestionably best Production of our time. – James Kenneth Stephen

REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. – Ambrose Bierce

Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. – John Wayne

Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism. – Alphonse de Lamartine

Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind. – George Washington

Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty. – Baron de Montesquieu

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them. – Joseph Story

Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.- Baron de Montesquieu

Republics demanded virtue. Monarchies could rely on coercion and “dazzling splendor” to suppress self-interest or factions; republics relied on the goodness of the people to put aside private interest for public good. The imperatives of virtue attached all sorts of desiderata to the republican citizen: simplicity, frugality, sobriety, simple manners, Christian benevolence, duty to the polity. Republics called on other virtues–spiritedness, courage–to protect the polity from external threats. Tyrants kept standing armies; republics relied on free yeomen, defending their own land. – James Monroe

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty. – Baron de Montesquieu

Republics have a longer life and enjoy better fortune than principalities, because they can profit by their greater internal diversity. They are the better able to meet emergencies. – Niccolo Machiavelli

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . . – Horace Mann

A community of small farmers… land property owners, will be the only assurance that the freedom our republic offers will be guaranteed to each and every citizen. – Thomas Jefferson

A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality. – Baron de Montesquieu

A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship. – Chalmers Johnson

A nation’ s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others. – Indira Gandhi

A perfect example of the new republic’s urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability. – John Ashbery

A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians--\risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has--\is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic. – Thomas Sowell

A republic – if you can keep it – is about limitation, and for good reason, because we are mortal and our actions are imperfect. – Mike Pence

A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour. – Charles Darwin

A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over. – Earl Warren

A republic may be called the climate of civilization. – Victor Hugo

A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences. – Alexander Hamilton

A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will. – Reinhold Niebuhr

A republic will avoid war unless the avoidance might create conditions that are worse than warfare itself. Sometimes, the dispositions of those who choose to make themselves our enemies leaves us no choice. – Thomas Jefferson

A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties. – Franklin Pierce

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking. – James Madison

A Republic, if you can keep it. – Benjamin Franklin

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.Niccolo Machiavelli

A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law…That portion of the sovereignty, to which each individual is entitled, can never be too highly prized. It is that for which we have fought and bled. – Alexander Hamilton

A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability. – Simon Bolivar

A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbid as few things as possible; a wise legislature would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government? – Elizabeth Cady Stanton

After many unhappy experiments in the direction of an ideal Republic, it was found that what may be described as a Despotism tempered by Dynamite provides, on the whole, the most satisfactory description of ruler – an autocrat who dares not abuse his autocratic power. – W. S. Gilbert

All from other lands, who by the terms of [congressional] laws and a compliance with their provisions become naturalized, are adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural born citizens. Gentleman [sic] can find no exception to this statement touching natural-born citizens except what is said in the Constitution relating to Indians. – John Bingham

All men of genius, and all those who have gained rank in the republic of letters, are brothers, whatever may be the land of their nativity. – Napoleon Bonaparte

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization. . . – Franklin D. Roosevelt

America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home. – Mark Twain

America has joined forces with the Allied Powers, and what we have of blood and treasure are yours. Therefore it is that with loving pride we drape the colors in tribute of respect to this citizen of your great republic. And here and now, in the presence of the illustrious dead, we pledge our hearts and our honor in carrying this war to a successful issue. Lafayette, we are here. – Charles E. Stanton

America is not a democracy. I think if your kids understood that – and most people don’t. We are a representative republic. We’re not a direct democracy. – Rush Limbaugh

America is not a white man’s republic. – Daniel Fried

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic–the res- publica–has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,–the private state,–to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, “ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet,” that the private state receive no detriment. – Henry David Thoreau

An absolute monarch, who is rich without patrimony, may be charitable without merit; and Constantine too easily believed that he should purchase the favour of Heaven if he maintained the idle at the expense of the industrious, and distributed among the saints the wealth of the republic. – Edward Gibbon

An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics – that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe. – James Madison

An armed republic submits less easily to the rule of one of its citizens than a republic armed by foreign forces. Rome and Sparta were for many centuries well armed and free. The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom. Among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible. It is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willingly one who is unarmed; or that any unarmed man will remain safe among armed servants. – Niccolo Machiavelli

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. – Plutarch

And further, I tell you that the Jew is right, when he acts as he does – because we are too timid to be as German as the Jew is Jewish! … It happened at the time of the [Bavarian] Soviet Republic: When the unleashed subhumans rambled murdering through the streets, the deputies hid behind a chimney in the Bavarian parliament. – Julius Streicher

And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic. – Robert W. Welch, Jr.

And the only forms of socialism in the world that were then getting results – malign ones, as it was – were the Fascist and Soviet republics. Fascism is a form of socialism – you rebuild the country, you find a scapegoat, and you go from there. – James Ellroy

As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century. – Robert A. Dahl

As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there. – Baron de Montesquieu

As you know, the Australian Labour Party is committed to turning the country into a republic. We’ve not stipulated a timeline for doing that. We are sensitive to the other priorities we’ve got as a nation and in the world, but in time the country will head in that direction. – Kevin Rudd

At first, I felt bad judging an entire state by one county political official, but then I found out Morrison had also helped screen public school textbooks, a topic which is another chapter in my book. The Alamo is managed by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, a group whose members can claim a relative who was living in Texas during the revolution. The fight over mismanagement of the Alamo has been going on for years. – Gail Collins

At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. For which service the senate, with complimentary resolutions, enrolled me in its order. – Augustus

At twenty every one is republican.Alphonse de Lamartine

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe, being under the control of the USSR, would call their states “people’s republics.” The sham that is currently going on in the states of the former Soviet Union is due to the fact that the politicians in power are eager to polish up their image abroad. – Garry Kasparov

Be the change you want to see in your networks. – James H. Fowler

Be the compromise you want to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi

Be the trouble you want to see in the world. – Joey Comeau

Because the people of New Hampshire take their responsibilities as citizens of the Republic seriously, they keep it interesting for candidates who, believe it or not, can get a little tired of the mannered, predictable, and unimaginative qualities that typically afflict modern political campaigns. – John McCain

Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments – a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared.William Jennings Bryan

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.John Marshall

Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following. – Paul Johnson

Build what you want to see in the world. – Jack Dorsey

But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But in Republics there is a stronger vitality, a fiercer hatred, a keener thirst for revenge. The memory of their former freedom will not let them rest; so that the safest course is either to destroy them, or to go and live in them. – Niccolo Machiavelli

Certainly there was no just cause of complaint from the Northern States – no advantage was ever sought or obtained by them for their section of the Republic. – Robert Toombs

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people. – Wendell Phillips

Democracy is not a Beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent deserves our support. – E. M. Forster

Democracy, republics: What do these words signify? – Haile Selassie

Despotism has forever had a powerful hold upon the world. Autocratic government, not self-government, has been the prevailing state of mankind. The record of past history is the record, not of the success of republics, but of their failure. – Calvin Coolidge

Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato’s Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. – Marcus Aurelius

During the games of the Circus, he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms, of the republic. – Edward Gibbon

Egotism erects its center in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the ungrateful. Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the throne of judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the following moment, or with the view to a martyr’s crown–indifferent whether the reward is in this life or in the next. – Friedrich Schiller

Egotism erects its center in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotismat solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation. – August Wilhelm von Schlegel

Every man, who parrots the cry of ‘stand by the President’ without adding the proviso ‘so far as he serves the Republic’ takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude. – Theodore Roosevelt

Fascism was part of the absolute evil. (…) We have to denounce the ashaming pages in the history of our past. (…) There included all the pages related to the discrimination and the persecution of jews and, more in general, of minoritires. And therefore that one [The Italian Social Republic of Salò] is also included. – Gianfranco Fini

Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic. – Otto von Bismarck

For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free. – Anatole France

For more than 220 years – from the 1620s to the 1840s – most American schooling was independent of government control, subsidy, and influence. From this educational freedom the American Republic was born. – Marshall Fritz

Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: “The king is dead, long live the king”, in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant. – Maximilien Robespierre

Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens. – Andrew Jackson

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.Alexis de Tocqueville

Haiti is unique – the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it’s like nothing the world has ever seen. – Ben Fountain

History in the making is a very uncertain thing. It might be better to wait till the South American republic has got through withits twenty-fifth revolution before reading much about it. When it is over, some one whose business it is, will be sure to give you in a digested form all that it concerns you to know, and save you trouble, confusion, and time. If you will follow this plan, you will be surprised to find how new and fresh your interest in what you read will become. – Anna Brackett

History teaches us that the capacity of things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic may be coming to its end… the US will probably maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. – Chalmers Johnson

Honduras was the original ‘banana republic,’ and its poverty remains extreme. – Elliott Abrams

Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People’s Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech. – Edward Snowden

How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy? – Alan Watts

How do things, whether they are movies, or plays, Hamilton, or people, ideas – how do they become transformative or iconic? That is in some ways what the actual Star Wars saga gets at, with the tale of the rise and the fall of the empire and the rise and the fall of Republics. – Cass Sunstein

I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic. – E. B. White

I am against revolution and am proud of it. Democracy cannot be created through revolutions. The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it. In a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire). When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act. – Akbar Ganji

I am Plato’s Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver’s Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. – Ray Bradbury

I began my journalistic career on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in. That’s the day I showed up for work at ‘The New Republic’ magazine. – Charles Krauthammer

I believe that this Republic will endure for many centuries. If so there will doubtless be among its Presidents Protestants and Catholics, and very probably at some time, Jews. I have consistently tried while President to act in relation to my fellow Americans of Catholic faith as I hope that any future President who happens to be Catholic will act towards his fellow Americans of Protestant faith. Had I followed any other course I should have felt that I was unfit to represent the American people. – Theodore Roosevelt

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; but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have, more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism.James Madison

I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people. – Alexis de Tocqueville

I certainly hoped that in the Eastern part of Germany, what was just beginning to be called the German Democratic Republic, you would develop a system of socialism with freedom and democracy. – Stefan Heym

I define the terms “founding fathers” and “founders” broadly to include an entire generation or two of Americans from many walks of life who, in the last half of the 18th century and early 19th century, articulated the rights of colonists, secured independence from Great Britain, and established new constitutional republics at both the national and state levels. This definition includes a cast of thousands who played their patriotic part at the local, state, and/or national levels. Among them were citizen soldiers, elected representatives, polemicists, and patriot preachers. – Daniel L Dreisbach

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him. – Samuel Johnson

I have sacrificed for the Republic all that man holds dear – my wife, my children, my liberty, my life. – Theobald of Bec

I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse. – Edward R. Murrow

I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government. – Lincoln Steffens

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country… corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.Abraham Lincoln

I speak of the war as fruitless; for it is clear that, prosecuted upon the basis of the proclamations of September 22d and September 24th, 1862, prosecuted, as I must understand these proclamations, to say nothing of the kindred blood which has followed, upon the theory of emancipation, devastation, subjugation, it cannot fail to be fruitless in every thing except the harvest of woe which it is ripening for what was once the peerless republic. – Franklin Pierce

I spoke on the phone with President Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. While there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward and success is by no means guaranteed, I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution. – Barack Obama

I think the regime in North Korea is more fragile than people think. The country’s economic system remains desperate, and one thing that could happen for example would be under a new government in South Korea, to get the South Korean government to live up to its own constitution, which says any Korean who makes it to South Korea, is a Korean citizen. A citizen of the Republic of Korea. And you could imagine the impact that would have inside North Korea if people thought, “If I could get out and make it to South Korea, I could have a different life.” – John Bolton

I’m convinced after spending three weeks in China and Tibet, unless the United States gets its act together, our grandchildren will be living in a world dominated by the People’s Republic. China is simply inexorable in its pursuit of wealth, growth and power. It cares little about human rights, democracy, labor protections, fair trade rules or the environment. It is relentless in advancing its national interests. – Mort Kondracke

I’m sure in a few years it will be unthinkable to say there were 20 years when we didn’t recognize the People’s Republic of China. And then we’ll have to explain what the political constraints were and why it didn’t happen earlier. – Pierre Trudeau

I’ve been in love (truly) with five women, the Spanish Republic and the 4th Infantry Division. – Ernest Hemingway

If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government’s being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend. – John Adams

If people are being upstanding citizens of the Republic, then you have to widen the net to incarcerate them. This explains why America’s prisons are full of nonviolent offenders – a perfect example of American exceptionalism. – Henry Rollins

If President Bush is serious about genocide, an immediate priority is to stop the cancer of Darfur from spreading further, which means working with France to shore up Chad and the Central African Republic. – Nicholas D. Kristof

If the Czar will not accord our people these desired liberties, then a revolution will bring about a republic which will assure us our rights. – Jacob Schiff

If the emperor had capriciously decreed the death of the most eminent and virtuous citizen of the republic, the cruel order would have been executed without hesitation by the ministers of open violence or of specious injustice. The caution, the delay, the difficulty with which he proceeded in the condemnation and punishment of a popular bishop, discovered to the world that the privileges of the church had already revived a sense of order and freedom in the Roman government. – Edward Gibbon

If the popular thing to do is to say you have to ban flag burning, even if it ultimately means we’re compromising a core principle of who we are as a republic, I don’t think Donald Trump really thinks that that deeply into it. – Megyn Kelly

If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India, then I claim verity for my picture in which the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last. – Mahatma Gandhi

If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle., unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. – James Connolly

If you want peace and well-being to be in place in the Middle East and you want terrorism to be uprooted, then there’s no path other than the presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you saw that in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen that the power that was able to help the people of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen in the face of terrorist groups was the Islamic Republic of Iran. – Hassan Rouhani

In 1838, Mirabeau B. Lamar, the Second President of the Republic of Texas and the Father of Texas education, declared: ‘The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.’Lyndon B. Johnson

In a representative republic, the education of our children must be of the utmost importance! – James Monroe

In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect. – Baron de Montesquieu

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.Marcus Tullius Cicero

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws. – Emile M. Cioran

In matters of philosophy and science authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. – William Stanley Jevons

In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself. The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace. – Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate governments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself. – James Madison

In the formative days of the Republic, the directing influence the Bible exercised upon the fathers of the Nation is conspicuously evident. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole. – Theodore Roosevelt

In the Islamic Republic the rights of the religious minorities are respectfully regarded. – Ruhollah Khomeini

In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level! – Mark Twain

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.Robert Green Ingersoll

In the two centuries that have passed since 1776, millions upon millions of Americans have worked and taken up arms when necessary to make that dream a reality. We can be extremely proud of what they have accomplished. Today, we are the world’s oldest republic. We are at peace. Our Nation and our way of life endure. We are free. – Gerald R. Ford

In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. – Karl Marx

In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment. – Edward Gibbon

In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred. – C. Sommerville

In the years since then, those four freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear – have stood as a summary of our aspirations for the American Republic and for the world. – Lyndon B. Johnson

India has no dearth of brave young men and women and if they get the opportunity and help then we can compete with other nations in space exploration and one of them will fulfil her dreams. – Atal Bihari Vajpayee

India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only. – Mark Twain

Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic. – Thomas Jefferson

Insurrection: Insurrection as soon as circumstances allow: insurrection, strenuous, ubiquitous: the insurrection of the masses: the holy war of the oppressed: the republic to make republicans: the people in action to initiate progress. Let the insurrection announce with its awful voice the decrees of God: let it clear and level the ground on which its own immortal structure shall be raised. Let it, like the Nile, flood all the country that it is destined to make fertile. – Giuseppe Mazzini

Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese. – George Orwell

It is a fallacy to believe that a Republic of any kind can be won through the shackled Free State. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The Free State is British created and serves British Imperialist interests. It is the buffer erected between British Capitalism and the Irish Republic. – Liam Mellows

it is a testament to the strength and purity of the democratic sentiment in the country, that the republic has not been overthrown by its newspapers.- Harriet Martineau

It is all the more necessary under a system of free government that the people should be enlightened, that they should be correctly informed, than it is under an absolute government that they should be ignorant. Under a republic the institutions of learning, while bound by the constitution and laws, are in no way subservient to the government. – Calvin Coolidge

It is more than petty treason to the Republic, to call a free citizen a servant. The whole class of young women, whose bread depends upon their labour, are taught to believe that the most abject poverty is preferable to domestic service. Hundreds of half-naked girls work in the paper-mills, or in any other manufactory, for less than half the wages they would receive in service; but they think their equality is compromised by the latter, and nothing but the wish to obtain some particular article of finery will ever induce them to submit to it. – Frances Trollope

It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. – James Madison

It is our sacred duty to transmit unimpaired to our posterity the blessings of liberty which were bequeathed to us by the founders of the Republic.Andrew Johnson

It is quite difficult to establish a clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship, as the causes are manifold and closely connected. It is simply not correct to link the level of democracy to prosperity. It is absolutely clear that the economic wealth of Saudi Arabia exceeds the performance of the Czech Republic. But apparently democracy is quite stable in the Czech Republic, which cannot be said about Saudi Arabia. As we delve into the past, we must not forget about the existing model of society. – Garry Kasparov

It is the privilege and duty of the present generation to pass on to its successors, unimpaired, the heritage of liberty bequeathed to it by the founders of the Republic. – George B. Cortelyou

It is very easy to make wild generalizations about Islam. All you have to do is read almost any issue of The New Republic and you’ll see there the radical evil that’s associated with Islam, the Arabs as having a depraved culture, and so forth. These are impossible generalizations to make in the United States about any other religious or ethnic group.Edward Said

It used to be the custom in this country that when you had made a career and were mature in judgment, you went to the Senate to give something back to the Republic. The idea that at age 25 you go out and buy a blow dryer and starting running for office is not what the founders had in mind. – Gore Vidal

It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.James Russell Lowell

It was reported in the left-wing press in the late 1930s that the Texas Company (Texaco), headed by the Nazi sympathizer Torkild Rieber, diverted its oil shipments from the Republic, with which it had contracts, to [Francisco] Franco. – Noam Chomsky

It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for you to get along in the republic of the United States. Now, if Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel over a watershed they don’t call out the national guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring suit in the Supreme Court and abide by its decision. There isn’t a reason in the world why we can’t do that internationally.Harry S. Truman

It’s precisely because America is not a democracy that we have survived! It’s precisely because majority rule does have checks and balances on it. It’s precisely because this is a representative republic that we have survived. – Rush Limbaugh

It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country. – Alan Lightman

It’s very important to face the grief, face the anger, and then get into a place where you are ready to fight because if you go back to the history of the United States of America, our Founders said we’re giving you a Republic if you can keep it, and they also said we have a Constitution and we’re going to form a more perfect union. – Barbara Boxer

Jean Jacques Rousseau is nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey…. For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends. – Stendhal

Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people to share a public power without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than on election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being citizens and of acting as citizens. – Hannah Arendt

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson corresponded for 13 years before they died on the same day. They asked, “How can one have prosperity without commerce? How can one have commerce without luxury? How can one have luxury without corruption? How can you have corruption without the end of the Republic?” And they really didn’t know the answer. – Pete Seeger

Kings play at war unfairly with republics; they can only lose some earth, and some creatures they value as little, while republics lose in every soldier a part of themselves.- Walter Savage Landor

Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history : the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal “honor” and court etiquette. – Isaac Asimov

Large republics seem to be essentially and inherently aggressive. – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Let us recall the well-known statement of a university professor in the Republic of the Massagetes: ‘Not the faculty but His Excellency the General can properly determine the sum of two and two.’ – Hermann Hesse

Let us together commence a journey of peace, harmony and progress in South Asia. – Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Life is a republic where the individuals are for the most part unconscious that while they are working for themselves they are also working for the public good. – Francis Galton

Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics. – Carlos Fuentes

Long before I was ordained a priest, I knew that my church was the most implacable enemy of this republic. My professors … had been unanimous in telling me that the principles and laws of the Church of Rome were absolutely antagonistic to the principles which are the foundation stones of the Constitution of the United States of America. – Charles Chiniquy

Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life.F. – Scott Fitzgerald

Los Estados Unidos has turned into a banana republic, a fascist banana republic. – Gerald Celente

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies. – Baron de Montesquieu

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation. – Niccolo Machiavelli

Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny. – Aristotle

Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own. – Seneca the Younger

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. – Susan B. Anthony

Most of what the founders knew about the Hebraic republic, it must be emphasized, they learned from the Bible. These Americans were well aware that ideas like republicanism found expression in traditions apart from the Hebrew experience, and, indeed, they studied these traditions both ancient and modern. – Daniel L Dreisbach

Music does affect your opinions. Plato is supposed to have said “It’s very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music into the republic.” – Pete Seeger

Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education. – Plato

My fellow Americans: Last night when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that the troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far. And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join me in prayer:

My idea of village SWARAJ is that is a complete republic, independent of its neighbors for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many others which dependence is a necessity. – Mahatma Gandhi

No class is safe unless government is so arranged that each class has in its hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics. – Wendell Phillips

No good government but what is republican… the very definition of a republic is ‘an empire of laws, and not of men.’ – John Adams

No republic can long exist unless a substantial equality in the wealth of citizens prevails. – Edward Bellamy

No republic ever yet stood on a stable foundation without satisfying the common people.- Mercy Otis Warren

No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. – Alexander Fraser Tytler

No single Tibetan dreaming return of previous sort of backwardness, therefore as far as economy development is concerned, Tibet remain within the People’s Republic of China, we will get greater benefit. – Dalai Lama

No, men and women of the Irish race, we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic. – James Larkin

Not in vain has Lincoln lived, for he has helped to make this republic an example of justice, with no caste but the caste of humanity. – George Bancroft

Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest governments are despotisms; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give many positive and many qualified rights. – Daniel Webster

Nothing like this has been attempted before. (…) It might be called a literary Porto Alegre. That implies a beginning, with much fierce argument and discussion to come. But whatever the outcome of ensuing criticisms or objections, The World Republic of Letters — empire more than republic, as Casanova shows — is likely to have the same sort of liberating impact at large as Said’s Orientalism, with which it stands comparison. – Perry Anderson

Of all the potential perils to the new American republic, the prospect of concentrated power . . . troubled the intellectual leaders of the Revolutionary generation. Familiar as the founders were with old Europe . . . they understood why the accumulation of inherited wealth led to inequities and imbalances that inevitably corrupted any system of government. – Joe Conason

Of course we have Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but in many ways we are a kind of republic. We don’t have royals in Australia, so it was kind of unusual to run into those kind of people. But aside from that it was quite ordinary. – Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark

Of one man in especial, beyond anyone else, the citizens of a republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape or another, profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic. It makes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or class interest, to religious or anti-religious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own interest. – Theodore Roosevelt

Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn’t just by conquest. It’s through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants. – Amy Chua

One of the greatest perils to an extensive republic is the disregard of individual rights. – Calvin Coolidge

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.Benjamin Franklin

Only when a republic’s life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is wrong. There is no other time. – Mark Twain

Our country right or wrong is an evil motto – what if your country be in the wrong? It will only compound her injury. I wish to serve the republic with an honest and fearless criticism. – Horace Greeley

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it. – Steve King

Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.Gerald R. Ford

Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India. – Mark Twain

Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world – nothing more and nothing less. – Ronald Reagan

Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.Joseph Pulitzer

Our Republic is not a pastoral, not a military, not an agricultural, not a nomadic, not a clerical, but a business civilization. Nor is there anything random, casual or accidental about the United States as a business society. It is thoroughly well integrated – organized from top to bottom for the maximum efficiency of commerce and industry, for the maximum efficiency of making money. – Margaret Halsey

Ours is a representative republic with a Constitution in which is recognized the natural law and the natural rights of man. It is a republic with a spiritual foundation characterized by freedom – freedom for the individual and for his society. – Ezra Taft Benson

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”Benjamin Franklin

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy. – Henry David Thoreau

Paraphrasing Plato’s Republic: “Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better.” – Rebecca Goldstein

Pay 2 Play vividly tells the story of the threat posed to our political process by big money interests and what we can do to fight back to defend our Republic. This is a must-see movie for anyone who cares about the cause of democracy and the promise of political equality for all. – John Bonifaz

Peace is the wish of the French of Italy Spain Germany and all the world, and Great Britain alone the cause of preventing its accomplishment, and this not for any point of honour or even interest, but merely lest there should be an example in the modern world of a great powerful Republic. – Charles James Fox

People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy. – Friedrich Engels

Perhaps it will be found that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving, therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice. – Thomas Jefferson

Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course – being also a novelist – am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me? – Margaret Atwood

Plato–who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to “real” people and everyday events–knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings. – Bruno Bettelheim

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions. – John Adams

Resistants were on the right side, Salò Republic’s combatants on the wrong one. One cannot equate who was fighting for a right cause of equality and freedom, and who, apart of good faith, was on the wrong side. The judgement of the Right [on Fascism] have to be negative, due to freedom limitation. We cannot deny ourselves history, and Fascism was a dictatorship that denied some fundamental freedoms.- Gianfranco Fini

Revolution? Unscrew the flag-staff, wrap the bunting in the oil covers, and put the thing in the clothes-chest. Let the old lady bring you your house-slippers and untie your fiery red necktie. You always make revolutions with your mugs, your republic–nothing but an industrial accident. – Alfred Doblin

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding. – Walter Bagehot

Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement … Manners, by which not only the freedom, but the very existence of the republics, are greatly affected, depend much upon the public institutions of religion and the good education of youth; in both these instances our fathers laid wise foundations, for which their posterity have had reason to bless their memory. – John Hancock

Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. – Thomas Jefferson

Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander. – Victor Hugo

Some commentators have drawn such a stark and gloomy picture of the Weimar Republic’s early difficulties that the Republic seems foredoomed to failure from the outset… The conditions in which Weimar democracy were born were certainly not such as to help it flourish; and as it unfolded, it was clearly saddled with a burden of problems, in a range of areas. – Mary Fulbrook

Some countries have a parliamentary republic, some are presidential republics and some are still monarchies, but no one sees them as not being democratic. In some countries regional leaders are appointed from the centre and in others they are elected. In Russia, the president is elected through direct secret ballot, and in the United States, the president is elected through a system of electoral colleges. – Vladimir Putin

Some members of Congress will claim that the federal government needs the power to monitor Americans in order to allow the government to operate more efficiently. I would remind my colleagues that, in a constitutional republic, the people are never asked to sacrifice their liberties to make the jobs of government officials easier. – Ron Paul

Some people say Russia is running at 50 percent of its gross domestic product under that during the Communist period. In fact, none of the countries seems to have recovered the level that they had under communism, although the other countries in Eastern Europe are doing better than Russia and particularly the Czech Republic seems to be doing modestly well. East Germany I can’t count because they have a rich uncle. You have economic benefits which have nothing to do with the workings of the system. – Kenneth Arrow

Someone recently pointed out how much Barack Obama’s style and strategies resemble those of Latin American charismatic despots – the takeover of industries by demagogues who never ran a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses and the personal cult of the leader promoted by the media. But do we want to become the world’s largest banana republic? – Thomas Sowell

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic. – John Steinbeck

Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people. – John Adams

That Plato’s Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history. – Bertrand Russell

That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion. – Edward Gibbon

The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors. – Plutarch

The Africans were oftentimes allied with the antagonist of the Republic. Now, you may want to step back and ask yourself why that might be. It may lead you to a reconsideration of the origins of the nation now known as the United States of America. As opposed to seeing it in the same vein as the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution, you might see it in the same vein as the revolt against British rule in Rhodesia in 1965, and, if so, that might help to shed light on why conservatism is so deeply entrenched in this republic. – Gerald Horne

The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation. – Maximilien Robespierre

The Baltic republics have invented something totally new. Do you know what? They use the word ‘non-citizens’ for people who have been living for decades in the territory of Baltic states and have been deprived of a number of political rights. They cannot participate in the election campaigns; they have limited political and social rights. Everybody keeps quiet about it, as if this is the way it should be. Of course, this cannot but cause a certain reaction. – Vladimir Putin

The basic principle that we must follow in directing the armies of the Republic is this: that they must feed themselves on war at the expense of the enemy territory. – Napoleon Bonaparte

The beginning of the decline of the Republic was the day they air-conditioned the Capitol. – Howard Baker

The best stuff that Cicero wrote, in the first century in Rome, were the Philippics, a series of speeches that he delivered against Marc Antony, whom he thought was irreparably dismantling the Republic of Rome. Those speeches are powerful because they’re not only really pointed but they’re thrillingly beautiful – and that’s precisely what made them dangerous: the fact that people wanted to read them. – John D’Agata

The breakup of the Soviet Union is a national tragedy on an enormous scale only the elites and nationalists of the republics gained. – Vladimir Putin

The Communist threat from without must not blind us to the Communist threat from within. The latter is reaching into the very heart of America through its espionage agents and a cunning, defiant, and lawless communist party, which is fanatically dedicated to the Marxist cause of world enslavement and destruction of the foundations of our republic. – J. Edgar Hoover

The Constitution is the bedrock of all our freedoms; guard and cherish it; keep honor and order in your own house; and the republic will endure. – Gerald R. Ford

The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself? – Thomas Paine

The distinctions of personal merit and influence, so conspicuous in a republic, so feeble and obscure under a monarchy, were abolished by the despotism of the emperors; who substituted in their room a severe subordination of rank and office, from the titled slaves who were seated on the steps of the throne, to the meanest instruments of arbitrary power. – Edward Gibbon

The earlier days of the republic went into the acquisition of money and the provision for material things is now finding an outlet in the espousal of art. Now America has the leisure and the culture to foster beauty. – Fritz Kreisler

The end of the republic is to enervate and to weaken all other bodies so as to increase its own body. – Niccolo Machiavelli

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.Theodore Roosevelt

The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others. – Theodore Roosevelt

The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.Dwight D. Eisenhower

The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn’t believe it gets one in the neck. – Alfred Doblin

The Government is able to afford a suitable army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard. – William Howard Taft

The great presidents never forget the principle of the republic and seek to preserve and enhance them – in the long run– without undermining the needs of the moment. Bad presidents simply do what is expedient, heedless of principles. But the worst presidents are those who adhere to the principles regardless of what the fortunes of the moment demand. – George Friedman

The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence or veiled in fable; and the world perhaps has lost but little which it needs regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived: and happily there never was a case in which every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved. – James Madison

The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a country … There is not even any systematic instruction given on political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic.- Harriet Martineau

The interesting thing about that is one of the greatest critics of socialism and leftwing writings was Robert Michels who wrote a series of essays called “The Iron Law of Oligarchy” and in these essays he discusses how no matter what sorts of freedoms are advertised or put into a society structure, that all societies, all form of governments – whether they be a Roman republic, whether they be a democracy, whether they be a Russian communist system, whatever, a tribe… a tribal council – all of the continuously, throughout the ages, have all converted back into an oligarchy. – Immortal Technique

The Islamists had control over territory that was about half the size of the Federal Republic of Germany. For years, we have been putting the lives of our troops on the line, we have taken huge losses and the Europeans cut the budget? If money is more important than the lives of our children, what else is this than the usual arrogance and superficiality? And where is all this terror coming from? It is a result of mistakes the West committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, when they armed the Islamic rebels against the Soviet troops. – Yoweri Museveni

The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect. – Baron de Montesquieu

The market-driven spectacle of war demands a culture of conformity, quiet intellectuals and a largely passive republic of consumers. – Henry Giroux

The Middle East is now filled with death and destruction and that was the aim of Neo-Conservatives who planned this destruction of seven Muslim nations in five years and they are on schedule and the final nation in their sights to destroy is the Islamic Republic of Iran. – Louis Farrakhan

The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. – Thomas Jefferson

The new republic should be based on diversity, respect and equal rights for all.Evo Morales

The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only foundation for . . . a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.Benjamin Rush

The people are not always well-informed, but is better that they have misconceptions that make them restless than that they be lethargic-for lethargy in the people means death for republics. – Thomas Jefferson

The political system of the People’s Republic of China can make things easy. Decisions are made quickly and results come quickly, too. In our democracy [in India], on the other hand, such things are extremely difficult. – Ratan Tata

The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations. – Joseph Pulitzer

The question of perpetual copyright is, in my judgement, entitled to the full and favorable consideration of the Congress of an enlightened republic. There would seem to be every reason for the equitable protection, without limit as to time, of the unquestioned property rights of its citizens. – Florence Earle Coates

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses… This little coterie…runs our government for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen…seizes…our executive officers…legislative bodies…schools… courts…newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. – John Francis Hylan

The Republic can count on me to battle its enemies… Offensive war suits the passionate character of the French, but it is the responsibility of the man in charge of leading them to prepare with caution and wisdom everything that leads to victory. – Tom Reiss

The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world. – Daniel J. Boorstin

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.Herbert Spencer

The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one’s own nature. – Georg Buchner

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.Joseph Story

The safety of the republic being the supreme law, and Texas having offered us the key to the safety of our country from all foreign intrigues and diplomacy, I say accept the key and bolt the door at once.Andrew Jackson

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: “It exists in spite of its ministers.Heinrich Heine

The Spain of today looks at the Second Republic with great appreciation and above all with satisfaction and pride for what we have been able to do in this constitutional age. – Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another – no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.Friedrich Engels

The State, every government whatever its form, character or color – be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or bolshevik – is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.- Emma Goldman

The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal will take care of themselves. Look after the courts of the poor, who stand most in need of justice. The security of the republic will be found in the treatment of the poor and the ignorant. In indifference to their misery and helplessness lies disaster.Charles Evans Hughes

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.James Madison

The typical American corporation is a shareholders’ republic the same way that China is a peoples’ republic. – James Surowiecki

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome. – Orestes Brownson

The weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community. In a republic like ours the governing class is composed of the strong men who take the trouble to do the work of government; and if you are too timid or too fastidious or too careless to do your part in this work, then you forfeit your right to be considered one of the governing and you become one of the governed instead one of the driven cattle of the political arena. – Theodore Roosevelt

The Western public should learn and remember one essential thing about China: no matter what European and North American propaganda barks about the People’s Republic, China is much more “democratic” than the West. It is democratic in its own way. – Andre Vltchek

The will of the entire people is the true basis of republican government, and a free expression . . . by the public vote of all citizens, without distinctions of race, color, occupation, or sex, is the only means by which that will can be ascertained. – Victoria Woodhull

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was. – Thomas Carlyle

There are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the states, though dismembered and alienated from each other…. The genius of republics, say they, is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humours which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord. – Alexander Hamilton

There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.Alan Watts

There is always an element of realpolitik that has to be present in the conduct of any nation’s national security affairs. At the same time, we have to also have a balance between realpolitik and Wilsonian principles of freedom and democracy and human rights. And maintaining that balance is the greatest challenge that we in the West, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have to face because it’s many times a very difficult decision-making process. – John McCain

There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is “an empire of laws, and not of men.” That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics. – John Adams

There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution. – John Adams

There is nothing puzzling … about America’s gratuitously aggressive foreign policy or about the oligarchs’ successful efforts to drag the Republic into five wars. What an aggressive foreign policy accomplishes by slow degrees, a state of war accomplishes in a trice. Overnight [war] kills reform, overnight it transforms insurgents into traitors and the Republic into an imperiled realm. Overnight it strangles free politics, distracts and overawes the citizenry. Overnight it blasts public hope. – Walter Karp

There’s a big difference in a representative republic and a democracy. We do not have a democracy in America. – Rush Limbaugh

This government to government relationship is the result of sovereign and independent tribal governments being incorporated into the fabric of our Nation, of Indian tribes becoming what our courts have come to refer to as quasi-sovereign domestic dependent nations. Over the years the relationship has flourished, grown, and evolved into a vibrant partnership in which over 500 tribal governments stand shoulder to shoulder with the other governmental units that form our Republic. – George H. W. Bush

This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil.- Helen Keller

This republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it.Elmer Davis

This was a “bad” example for U.S. slaves. Haiti was subjected to an embargo from the United States, which, along with many other countries, refused to recognize this new republic. – Edwidge Danticat

Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments. – Robert Walpole

To every reversal of people’s soveregnity, to every disappearance of the Republic corresponds a frank or disguised restitution in force of the regal justice. “Tell me, according to what you judge and I’ll tell you who you are.” No axiom in politics is more certain than this. – Francois Mitterrand

To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing. – Theodore Roosevelt

To the American people I bid a fond farewell. Guard your liberties. It is the trust of each generation to pass a free republic to the next. And if I know you right, you will rouse yourself from slumber to ensure exactly that. – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

To-day Massachusetts; and the whole of the American republic, from the border of Maine to the Pacific slopes, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, stand upon the immutable and everlasting principles of equal and exact justice. The days of unrequited labor are numbered with the past. Fugitive slave laws are only remembered as relics of that barbarism which John Wesley pronounced “the sum of all villainies,” and whose knowledge of its blighting effects was matured by his travels in Georgia and the Carolinas. – Horace Mann

Today’s widespread relegation of religion to merely something people do only in the privacy of their homes or churches would have been unimaginable to the founders of the republic – even those who personally repudiated orthodox Christian faith. – Charles Colson

Tortured for the Republic. – James A. Garfield

Training with the equipment and protocols at Athletic Republic really helped me improve my speed and first-step explosiveness. – Darren McFadden

Ulysses is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic. – Tom Paulin

Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience, he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain. – Thomas Paine

Unlike other countries, it was founded on written proclamations. America is an ideal as well as a republic. Its documents are open to revisions. They’re works in progress. There’s an invitation to participate. – Christopher Hitchens

Virtue in a republic is the love of one’s country, that is the love of equality. – Baron de Montesquieu

Virtue is necessary to a republic.Baron de Montesquieu

Washington, one feels in Washington, is the spoiled child of the republic. – Montgomery Schuyler

We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A Republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when the day comes when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nations to the changed conditions. – James Madison

We are well on our way to becoming a banana republic in every respect except, of course, that we don’t grow bananas. – Burt Prelutsky

We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity. – Theodore Roosevelt

We cannot improve on the system of government handed down to us by the founders of the Republic. There is no way to improve upon that. But what we can do is to find new ways to implement that system and realize our destiny. – Barbara Jordan

We have always believed that our people can stand on no higher ground than the school ground, or can enter any more hopeful room than the classroom. We blend time and faith and knowledge in our schools – not only to create educated citizens, but also to shape the destiny of this great Republic. – Lyndon B. Johnson

We have retained the forms and phrases of a republic, but in reality we are living under an oligarchy, not of courtesan, but of bureaucrats. – Frank Chodorov

We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere. – Philip Pullman

We lived in a totalitarian system for more than 70 years, and our views are still under its influence. Many heads of state in the former Soviet republics believe that they must have total power. – Irakli Okruashvili

We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror. – Maximilien Robespierre

We need to get back into grappling with people we disagree with if we want to restore the Republic. – Naomi Wolf

Well, I think they’re going to learn that an awful lot of French people changed their minds. In 1940, the Third Republic had made a miserable mess of it. – Robert O. Paxton

What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the individual: few citizens feel that they are the Republic, responsible for what happens. And when the individual in a democracy ceases to feel his importance, then there is grave danger that he will give over his freedom, if not to a Fascist State, then to the advertising men or Publicity Agents or to the newspaper he happens to read.- May Sarton

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute.- Andrew Jackson

What greater gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth? – Marcus Tullius Cicero

What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?

What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government … it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power. – Thomas Paine

What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws.Alexander Hamilton

What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost. – Joseph Stalin

What’s wrong with it is, it lowers, to say the least, the credibility of the magazine. And if I were writing for [The New Republic ], I would feel diminished because the owner had done such a thing [fire a journalist]. – Nat Hentoff

When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty. – Baron de Montesquieu

When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions. – Calvin Coolidge

When a monarchy gradually transforms itself into a republic, the executive power there preserves titles, honors, respect, and even money long after it has lost the reality of power. The English, having cut off the head of one of their kings and chased another off the throne, still go on their knees to address the successors of those princes. On the other hand, when a republic falls under one man’s yoke, the ruler’s demeanor remains simple, unaffected, and modest, as if he had not already been raised above everybody. – Alexis de Tocqueville

When a republic’s most venerable institutions no longer operate as they were intended, it becomes possible for small cabals to usurp power, and, while keeping the forms, corrupt the function of those institutions for their own ends. Looking at things that way, the George W. Bush presidency has been both result and symptom of the decadence of America’s constitutional mechanisms. – T. D. Allman

When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand. – William Randolph Hearst

When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato’s Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful. – Robert Nozick

When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger. – Rick Perlstein

When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.Thomas Jefferson

When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form. – John Adams

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme.Harriet Martineau

While I was not consulted prior to the President’s decision to intervene in support of the Republic of Korea, that decision from a military standpoint, proved a sound one, as we hurled back the invader and decimated his forces. Our victory was complete, and our objectives within reach, when Red China intervened with numerically superior ground forces. – Douglas MacArthur

While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet–whom Plato banned from his Republic–may rise up to save us all. – Isaac Bashevis Singer

While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy. – Henry David Thoreau

Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No — we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own. – Andrew Jackson

Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs? – Mark Twain

Women are free in the Islamic Republic in the selection of their activities and their future and their clothing. – Ruhollah Khomeini

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic. – Robinson Jeffers

[A] republic . . . [is] a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them was secure and protected by law . . . implies liberty; because property cannot be secured unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose. – John Adams

[A]ll popular and well-mixed governments [republics] . . . are ever established by wise and good men, and can never be upheld otherwise than by virtue: The worst men always conspiring against them, they must fall, if the best have not power to preserve them. . . . [and] unless they be preserved in a great measure free from vices . . . . – Algernon Sidney

[Lat., Quod enim munus reiplicae afferre majus, meliusve possumus, quam si docemus atque erudimus juventutem?]- Marcus Tullius Cicero

[To the suggestion that Great Britain might someday want a Republic:] We’ll go quietly. – Queen Elizabeth II

Election in Indonesia

Election in Indonesia

Quotes From Wikiquote

  • [A] licentious people is not going to sustain republican government. We’ve got to make sure that republican government, government not only of the people as all government is but by and for the people doesn’t perish from the Earth. If we lose it here, it’s not as if it’s going to be restarted somewhere else.
    • Robert P. George, interview with Bill Kristol (April 2016), transcript
  • “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
    “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

    • Response attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation, in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention. McHenry’s notes were first published in The American Historical Review, vol. 11 (1906), and the anecdote on p. 618 reads: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” When McHenry’s notes were included in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 85 (1911, reprinted 1934), a footnote stated that the date this anecdote was written is uncertain. As noted in this library of congress post on the topic. This quote is probably false. “Although this story recorded by James McHenry (1753–1816), a delegate from Maryland, is probably fictitious, people wondered just what kind of government was called for in the new constitution.” http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/convention-and-ratification.html#obj8. It is not the quote that is false but the date.
  • The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering: so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes.
    • Horace Greeley, Greeley on Lincoln, ed. Joel Benton, p. 78–79 (1893).
  • You and your descendants have to ascertain whether this great mass will hold together under the forms of a republic, and the despotic reality of universal suffrage; whether state rights will hold out against centralisation, without separation, whether centralisation will get the better, without actual or disguised monarchy; whether shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy; and as population thickens in your great cities, and the pressure of what is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk among you, and communism and socialism will claim to be heard.
    • Thomas Henry Huxley, Science and Education (1904), p. 138.
  • But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans—we are federalists.
    • Thomas Jefferson, inaugural address (March 4, 1801); in Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1904), vol. 3, p. 319.
  • In truth, the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that “governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.” Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in them. But experience and reflection have but more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal representation then proposed.
    • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval (July 12, 1816); in Paul L. Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1899), vol. 10, p. 37.
  • When a monarchy gradually transforms itself into a republic, the executive power there preserves titles, honors, respect, and even money long after it has lost the reality of power. The English, having cut off the head of one of their kings and chased another off the throne, still go on their knees to address the successors of those princes. On the other hand, when a republic falls under one man’s yoke, the ruler’s demeanor remains simple, unaffected, and modest, as if he had not already been raised above everybody.
    • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 8, p. 123 (1969). Originally published in 1835–1840.
  • Just as people are born, live a time, and die by diseases or old age, in the same way republics are formed, flower a few centuries, and persih finally by the audacity of a citizen, or by the weapons of their enemies. All has their period; all empires, and largest monarchies even, have only so much time: the republics feel continually that this time will arrive, and they look at any too-powerful family as the carriers of a disease which will give them the blow of death.
    • Frederick II of Prussia, Anti-Machiavel Chapter IX
  • A republic is, in essence, what a monarchy is not. That, in short, is the argument, based on a very long history of states called republics, and thinkers called republicans, who learned from each other. A republic is a state that has many rulers, instead of one, most of them independently elected rather than appointed. A republic is a state where most of the public business must perforce be publicly aired, since these many magistrates naturally differ about that business and thus cannot conduct it without robust argument. Though it is still said in our civic pedagogy that a republic is something called a “representative democracy,” many of history’s republicans have not been representative, and many have been far from democratic, including some which were undemocratic precisely by virtue of being representative. What all republics have been is polyarchal, ruled by the pluribus instead of the uno.
    • William Everdell, The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

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