Category: Thought

In adopting a republican form of government, I not only took it as a man does his wife, for better or for worse, but what a few men do with their wives, I took it knowing all of its bad qualities. Neither ingratitude, therefore, nor slander can disappoint expectation nor excite surprise. If, in arduous circumstances, the voice of my country should call for my services, and I have the well founded belief, that they can be useful, they shall certainly be rendered; but I hope that no such circumstances will arise and in the mean time, ‘pleas’d let me trifle away.

Gouverneur Morris to John Dickinson (May 23, 1803).

[A]ll power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty and the right of acquiring property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution.

James Madison served as fourth President of the United States.

The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent.

Anders Chydenius (1739 – 1803) was a Swedish priest and politician born in what is now Ostrobothnian Finland. This quotation is from The National Gain, §20, 1765.

“Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.”

Anders Chydenius (1739 – 1803) was a Swedish priest and politician born in what is now Ostrobothnian Finland. This quotation is from The National Gain, §2, 1765.

“Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate in adhering to an opinion once adopted.”

William Cobbett (1763-1835), British pamphleteer, 1796.

“[E]very individual spontaneously tries to find the place and the trade in which he can best increase National gain, if laws do not prevent him from doing so.”

Anders Chydenius, The National Gain, §5, 1765.

“Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.”

William Cobbett (1763-1835), British pamphleteer, 1804.

“The exercise of one coercion always makes another inevitable.”

Anders Chydenius (1739 – 1803) was a Swedish priest and politician born in what is now Ostrobothnian Finland. This quotation is from his “Thoughts on the Natural Rights of Servants and Peasants,” 1778.

Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts.