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“Theistic forces, be they Islamic, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon, teach that there is an absolute right and wrong. Theistic forces have an ethic that reveres the righteous judgments of a loving God and obeys civil and divine law voluntarily. The theistic mind-set instills a conscience to do what is right and obey laws that might be otherwise unenforceable. With such a commitment, you obey a red stop light, even if no other traffic is in sight. As a God-fearing person, you know that even if the police didn’t catch you if you were to steal, murder, or commit adultery, these acts are wrong, and God will ultimately hold you accountable. You know, just as your ancestors knew, that the consequences for not playing by the rules are not only temporal, but also eternal. These theistic forces were part of the shaping of America. From the Book of Mormon, we have learned that this is a “land of promise, . . . choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people.”

“according to the economists, the function of the state was not merely one of ruling the nation, but also that of recasting it in a given mold, of shaping the mentality of the population as a whole in accordance with a predetermined model and instilling the ideas and sentiments they thought desirable into the minds of all.”

“Every society had its elites, of course: its wealthy, well-educated, upwardly mobile types. Machiavelli, a republican himself, called them the grandi. The trick to preserving a republic was not to allow them to predominate as a class, to amass power at the expense of their fellows. Or more precisely: the key was not to allow them to amass power at the expense of the common man.”

“While property continues to be pretty equally divided, and a considerable share of information pervades the community; the tendency of the people's suffrages, will be to elevate merit even from obscurity. As riches increase and accumulate in few hands; as luxury prevails in society; virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.”

“Not one word was said by Moses or Aaron as to the wickedness of depriving a human being of his liberty. Not a word was said in favor of liberty. Not the slightest intimation that a human being was justly entitled to the product of his own labor. Not a word about the cruelty of masters who would destroy even the babes of slave mothers. It seems to me wonderful that this God did not tell the king of Egypt that no nation could enslave another, without also enslaving itself; that it was impossible to put a chain around the limbs of a slave, without putting manacles upon the brain of the master. Why did he not tell him that a nation founded upon slavery could not stand? Instead of declaring these things, instead of appealing to justice, to mercy and to liberty, he resorted to feats of jugglery. Suppose we wished to make a treaty with a barbarous nation, and the president should employ a sleight-of-hand performer as envoy extraordinary, and instruct him, that when he came into the presence of the savage monarch, he should cast down an umbrella or a walking stick, which would change into a lizard or a turtle; what would we think? Would we not regard such a performance as beneath the dignity even of a president? And what would be our feelings if the savage king sent for his sorcerers and had them perform the same feat? If such things would appear puerile and foolish in the president of a great republic, what shall be said when they were resorted to by the creator of all worlds? How small, how contemptible such a God appears!”

“In a democracy, there will be more complaints but less crisis, in a dictatorship more silence but much more suffering.”

“And when the constitution of the State is completed, the conception of justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or different names throughout the work, both as the inner law of the individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards and punishments of another life. The virtues are based on justice, of which common honesty in buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is based on the idea of good, which is the harmony of the world, and is reflected both in the institutions of states and in motions of the heavenly bodies.”

“«Ἀνάγκης θυγατρός κόρης Λαχέσεως λόγος. Ψυχαὶ ἐφήμεροι, ἀρχὴ ἂλλης περιόδου θνητοῦ γένους θανατηφόρου. Οὐχ ὑμᾶς δαίμων λήξεται, ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς δαίμονα αἱρήσεσθε. Πρῶτος δ’ ὁ λαχών πρῶτος αἱρείσθω βίον ᾧ συνέσται ἐξ ἀνάγκης. Ἀρετὴ δὲ ἀδέσποτον, ἣν τιμῶν καὶ ἀτιμάζων πλέον καὶ ἒλαττον αὐτῆς ἓκαστος ἓξει. Αἰτία ἑλομένου. θεὸς ἀναίτιος.»”

“Let someone else be the most powerful country, make ours the most peaceful country.”

“Und nicht wahr, wenn man ihn zwänge, in das Licht selbst zu sehen, so würde er Schmerzen an den Augen haben, davonlaufen und sich wieder jenen Schattengegenständen zuwenden, die er ansehen kann, und würde dabei bleiben, diese wären wirklich deutlicher als die, welche er gezeigt bekam? And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?”

“The prevailing opinion among historians, ancient and modern alike, is that the senatorial assassins were intent upon restoring republican liberties by doing away with a despotic usurper. This is the justification offered by the assassins themselves. I present an alternative explanation: The Senate aristocrats killed Caesar because they perceived him to be a popular leader who threatened their privileged interests.”

“The greatest hero for a country is the person who gave a progressive vision, a peaceful soul, a modern mind and an unshakable belief in science to his nation. And for the Turks, this honorable name is Atatürk, an immortal revolutionist!”

“In examining the division of powers, as established by the Federal Constitution, remarking on the one hand the portion of sovereignty which has been reserved to the several States, and on the other, the share of power which has been given to the Union, it is evident that the Federal legislators entertained very clear and accurate notions respecting the centralization of government. The United States form not only a republic, but a confederation; yet the national authority is more centralized there than it was in several of the absolute monarchies of Europe....”

“In a democracy government is the God.”

“My father would take me into the voting booth with him when I was little. He also took me house to house raising Dollars for Democrats. He was gone by the time I turned 30, but I feel him with me every time I vote, even if there's no booth anymore and no lever to pull to ensure privacy. I took my mother to vote every single election after she stopped driving, even when she was in an assisted living residence. Never would we pass up the opportunity to vote.”

“Of one man in especial, beyond any one 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 antireligious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own interest. The very last thing an intelligent and self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to reward any public man because that public man says that he will get the private citizen something to which this private citizen is not entitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which this private citizen ought not to possess… If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something wrong against your interest.”

“Adapting certain features of Empedoclean daimonology, Plato formulated a more rigorous theory of daimonification through virtue. He daimonified the soldiers of his ideal republic for their courage, and daimonified rulers (“guardians”) for their wisdom. In his Cratylus, Plato vouched for the daimonification of all people who were noble and wise. Plato’s Timaeus introduced the ultimate democratic principle of daimonification by identifying one’s guardian daimon with humanity’s higher consciousness (or nous).”

“It was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America – an idea about the way people should govern themselves. Some people make the mistake of calling that idea ‘democracy’ and imagining that any country can adopt it merely by holding elections. In reality, democracy was the capstone of an edifice that had as its foundation the rule of law – to be precise, the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government.”

“For Schopenhauer, there is only one underlying reality; for Kant, there are things in themselves as a plurality. The difference is singularity against plurality (diversity). But this difference may be only on the surface, for it is hard to imagine that Kant thought of noumenon (if equated to a thing in itself) as of plurality, but rather that things in themselves are not differentiated in the noumenon as they are in the world of phenomena for these phenomena are only particular, phenomenal manifestations of the One—Noumenon (although this may not be the case with Plato). Let’s think deeper about Plato’s idea of noumenon. We may conclude that, although on a superficial level, noumenon may contain plurality, when we look deeper, we may conclude that Plato’s noumenon is singularity too. Regardless of the description and explanation in the Republic, Plato’s noumenon is or may be the undifferentiated One. The idea that the world we see and the things in it are only the shadows of an underlying reality or noumena does not necessarily mean that all these things have their literal equivalents in the noumenon. In the end, there seems to be less difference between Plato’s forms (ideas) and Kant’s things in themselves than it looks like on the surface. Still, noumenon, although being a singularity, being the One and universal underlying reality, contains plurality as a potential.”