Self-government Quotes - Page 5

• 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

  Powerful, Past, Government

  Calvin Coolidge (2001). “The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses”, p.343, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealist Americans to public service that our citizens deserved and that our system of self-government demands.

  Barack Obama

  Patriotic, Government, Self

  "Partisan-in-chief Obama – crossing the line with America's federal workforce" By Tony Shaffer, www.foxnews.com. October 03, 2013.

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• I currently perform the most important political duties an American has the responsibility to perform - I experiment in self-government on a daily basis, fulfilling my "we the people" duties to monitor and guide our elected employees to adhere to their oath to the U.S. Constitution and demand accountability from them.

  Ted Nugent

  Responsibility, Government, Self

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• There is a reason why conservatives talk about 'government' and not 'self-government,' because to refer to the latter is to concede that 'the government' is really the most basic product of our political commonwealth, that it is what we produce among ourselves so as to order the production of everything else that we do together.

  Charlie Pierce

  Government, Self, Order

  "The President Finally Accepts America for Ourselves" by Charlie Pierce, www.esquire.com. July 27, 2015.

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• In my opinion, Chief Justice Roberts put it best during his recent confirmation hearings. And he said, and I quote, "The framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government to sit down and say, 'Well, let's take all the difficult issues before us and let's have the judges decide them.' That would have been the farthest thing from their mind," however, I fear that the Supreme Court forgets this advice.

  Mike DeWine

  Issues, Government, Self

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• You cannot preach self-government and liberty to people in a starving land.

  Fiorello H. La Guardia

  Government, Self, Land

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• It is often said that our modern world is incapable of self-government.

  Robert A. Agresta

  Government, Self, World

  Inauguration Speech at the Mayor & Council Meeting, January 2009.

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• The idea of self-government is foreign to Americans. ... Self-government is a form of self-control, self-limitation. It goes against our whole grain. We're supposed to go after what we want, not question whether we really need it.

  Judith Perelman Rossner

  Government, Self, Ideas

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• Last evening attended Croghan Lodge International Order of Odd Fellows. Election of officers. Chosen Noble Grand. These social organizations have a number of good results. All who attend are educated in self-government. This in a marked way. They bind society together. The well-to-do and the poor should be brought together as much as possible. The separation into classes--castes--is our danger. It is the danger of all civilizations.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Civilization, Class, Organization

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• If we cannot count on ourselves to do the right thing how can we count on anyone or anything else? Self-government won't work without self-discipline.

  Paul Harvey

  Government, Self, Discipline

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• We Americans think we enjoy self-government. We have all the trappings of self-government, like elections. But in reality, we have gradually lost many of our rights to govern ourselves. We have the form of self-government, but only some of the substance. We are, in a sense, a nation run by a handful of judges who often enforce, not the law, but their personal opinions.

  Charles Colson

  Running, Reality, Thinking

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• When I talk about self-management, self-regulation, self-government, the word I emphasize is self, and my concern is with the reconstruction of the self. Marxists and even many, I think, overly enthusiastic anarchists have neglected that self.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Government, Self

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Country, Government, Self

  Mahatma Gandhi, Rudrangshu Mukherjee (1993). “The Penguin Gandhi Reader”, p.151, Penguin Books India

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• The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Government, Self

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.531, Рипол Классик

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• Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.

  George W. Bush

  Government, Self, Ends

  Second Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 2005

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• I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, Fighting, Night

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• They [the Founding Fathers] were intent upon establishing a Christian commonwealth in accordance with the principle of self-government. They were an inspired body of men. It has been said that God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness ... Who can fail to see it in the hand of Destiny? Who can doubt that it has been guided by a Divine Providence?

  Calvin Coolidge

  Christian, Father, Destiny

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• All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty. That they retain the capacity for self-government. That, addressed as free-born, autonomous men and women of God-given dignity, they will rise yet again to drive back a mortal enemy.

  Mitch Daniels

  Men, Self, People

  Keynote Speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee, delivered 11 February 2011, Ronald Reagan Centennial Dinner, Washington, D.C.

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• Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  School, Government, Self

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

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• The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican? It is evident that no other form would be reconcileable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the revolution; or with that honourable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.

  James Madison

  Determination, Government, Self

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Eye, Blessing

  Thomas Jefferson (2006). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.276, Hackett Publishing

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• We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Thinking, Government

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.384, Cambridge University Press

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• Nations are beginning to look to some vague organization, some nebulous course of humanity, to pay their bills and tell them what to do. This is not local self-government. It is not American. It is not the method which has made this country what it is. We can not maintain the western standard of civilization on that theory. If it is supported at all, it will have to be supported on the principle of individual responsibility.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Country, Responsibility, Government

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• By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government.

  Todd Akin

  Government, Self, Political

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• Self-government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. The republican form of government is the noblest and the best, as it is the latest.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Government, Self, Ideas

  Henry Ward Beecher (1863). “Freedom and War: Discourses on Topics Suggested by the Times”, p.350

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