Commonwealth Quotes - Page 7

• Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

  Winston Churchill

  War, Moving, Fall

  Hansard 18 June 1940, col. 60

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the commonwealth, they both please themselves alike, only we commend that, whereby we ourselves receive some benefit.

  John Selden

  Benefits, Pleasure, Please

  John Selden, Richard Milward (1689). “Table Talk: Being the Discourses of John Selden”, p.100

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• May it be my privilege to have the happiness of establishing the commonwealth on a firm and secure basis and thus enjoy the reward which I desire, but only if I may be called the author of the best possible government; and bear with me the hope when I die that the foundations which I have laid for its future government, will stand firm and stable.

  Augustus

  Latin, Government, Desire

  "Divus Augustus". Book by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus translated by Robert Graves, 1957.

  105 Copy quote

  Show source

• The immemorial ingratitude of rulers and commonwealths is proverbial. Especially common is ingratitude to Israel - the People that has achieved so much of eternal worth, but has rarely succeeded in winning gratitude.

  Joseph Hertz

  Gratitude, Winning, Israel

  Joseph Herman Hertz (1941). “Ḥamishah ḥumshe Torah ʻim haftarot”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Would a special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth be inconsistent with our overriding loyalty to the world organization?

  Lord Randolph Churchill

  Loyalty, Organization, Special

  5 Copy quote

• The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kindness, Character, Doe

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reading, Heart, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1976). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume XII: 1835-1862”, p.127, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Argument, Pagan

  11 Copy quote

• The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.

  Edmund Burke

  Real, Practice, Political

  Edmund Burke (1811). “Maxims and opinions, moral, political and economical, with characters, from the works of ... Edmund Burke”, p.80

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

  Edmund Burke

  Change, Summer, Fashion

  Edmund Burke (2005). “Burke, Select Works”, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found: by being ever kept, it is ever lost. ’Tis too cold a companion: away with ’t!

  William Shakespeare

  Loss, May, Firsts

  William Shakespeare (2011). “A Choice of Shakespeare's Verse”, p.21, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own.

  Woodrow Wilson

  College, World, Littles

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1973). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshiper and the worshiper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Dream, Country, Play

  1904 Of Heaven, Keegan speaking. John Bull's Other Island, act 4.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is noninterference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile to the industrious, brave and persevering.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Opportunity, Doors, Self

  4 Copy quote

• The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God (which, we must note, was addressed specifically to perennial problems in political morality), then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) — the standard of self-law or autonomy.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Men, Self, Expression

  "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today".

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.

  Samuel Adams

  Perseverance, Men, Voting

  11 Copy quote

• Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.

  John Dryden

  Kings, Political, True Or False

  'Absalom and Achitophel' (1681) pt. 1, l. 83

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

  Alan Bennett

  Reading, Book, Literature

  23 Copy quote

• The most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of SPEECH, consisting of Names or Appellations, and their Connexion; whereby men register their Thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also declare them one to another for mutuall utility and conversation; without which, there had been amongst men, neither Commonwealth, nor Society, nor Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears, and Wolves.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Science, Past, Men

  Thomas Hobbes, Richard Tuck (1996). “Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised Student Edition”, p.24, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Philosophy, Book, Law

  "Leviathan". Book by Thomas Hobbes. The Second Part, Chapter 26, 1651.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know not why any one but a school boy in his declamation would whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they were rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves and of one another.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Boys, Rome

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.”, p.473

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was Indira Gandhi who very much lined up with the Russians. And she was, you know, within the Commonwealth, basically one out on that. The first meeting in 1983 was held in India and I was very off put by her. I just couldn't abide her, basically.

  Bob Hawke

  Firsts, India, Meetings

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more able a man is, if he make ill use of his abilities, the more dangerous will he be to the commonwealth.

  Demosthenes

  Men, Use, Able

  10 Copy quote

• I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society.

  John Adams

  School, Knowledge, Feet

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.9

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Legislative cannot transfer the Power of Making Laws to any other hands. For it being but a delegated Power from the People, they who have it, cannot pass it over to others. The People alone can appoint the Form of the Commonwealth, which is by Constituting the Legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be.

  John Locke

  Hands, Law, People

  John Locke (1759). “THE WORKS OF JOHN LOCKE, Esq;: In THREE VOLUMES. To which is Added, The LIFE of the AUTHOR; AND A COLLECTION of Several of His PIECES Published by Mr. DESMAIZEAUX.”, p.208

  10 Copy quote

  Show source