Skip to content

I would have been glad to have lived under my wood side, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertook such a Government as this is.

— Oliver Cromwell

Another quote →

Topics

Government

More quotes by Oliver Cromwell

We declared our intentions to preserve monarchy, and they still are so, unless necessity enforce an alteration.

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.

A few honest men are better than numbers.

Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imagined necessities... are the greatest cozenage that men can put upon the Providence of God, and make pretenses to break known rules by.

All Oliver Cromwell quotes →

You may also like

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