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The best government rests on the people and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.

— George Bancroft Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

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Government

More quotes by George Bancroft

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

A History of the United States (1834)

Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle.

A History of the United States (1834)

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are blindly adopted; the second wilfully preferred.

Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

The progress of man consists in this, that he himself arrives at the perception of truth.

Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

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