Famous quotes containing the word governments:
“Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)