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There was a State without kings or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had elected, and equal laws which it had framed.

— Rufus Choate

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Government

More quotes by Rufus Choate

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.

We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag, and keep step to the music of the Union.

Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.

Letter to the Maine Whig Committee (1856)

Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument.

Dictionary of American Maxims‎ (1955)

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