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The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people. Freedom of the press, too.

— Fisher Ames

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More quotes by Fisher Ames

I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.

The gentleman puts me in mind of an old hen which persists in setting after her eggs are taken away.

Memoirs of Theophilus Parsons (1859)

Liberty has never yet lasted long in a democracy; nor has it ever ended in any thing better than despotism.

American Literature (1805)

The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness, which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be, liberty.

The Dangers of American Liberty (1805)

[The framers of the Constitution] “intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.”

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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: Fisher Ames (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.