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I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

— Gerrit Smith

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Government

More quotes by Gerrit Smith

But as well may you, when urging a man up-hill with a heavy load upon his back, and with your lash also upon his back, tell him, that be has nothing to do either with the load or the lash.

The most effectual of all ways for making ourselves feel morally whole, and for attaining to the greatest heights of self-complacency, is to fall upon others for the sins of which we are ourselves guilty.

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Gerrit Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.