“The house of representatives ... can make no law, which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.”
Quote by James Madison
“We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.”
Source: 1816-1828
“As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them.”
“It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.”
Source: Rights of Man
“If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they will be despised.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“They took care to represent government as a thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves understood, and they hid from the understanding of the nation, the only thing that was beneficial to know, namely, that government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.”
Source: The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies
“There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state. The construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity.”
Source: The Rights of Man
“What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.”
Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…
“All men can understand what representation is; and that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution