Government

"I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days."

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

"The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next."

"One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

"The dead should not rule the living."

"It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government."

"The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better."

"The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible."

"The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law."

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."

"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is."

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched."