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Quotations for Presidents Day February 20, 2012 |
Source: a selection from the compilation of quotations about "Presidents,
Kings, Tyrants, & Despots"
from the Online Library of Liberty Collection
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Jefferson feared that it would only be
a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated
into a form of “elective despotism” (1785)
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Because Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) thought it would be only a matter of time
before the American system of government degenerated into an “elective
despotism,” he warned that citizens should act now in order to make
sure that “the wolf [was kept] out of the fold”:
Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and
power which they possess, or may assume. The public money and public
liberty, intended to have been deposited with three branches of
magistracy, but found inadvertently to be in the hands of one only,
will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to
those who hold them… They [the assembly] should look forward to
a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this,
as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized
the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body
of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people,
and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every
side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same
causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before
they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf
out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons
after he shall have entered.
[Go to the quotation.]
[See more on the American
Revolution & Constitution.]
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Quotations on Presidents, Kings, Tyrants, and Despots:
- (19 February, 2012) Viscount Bryce on how the President in wartime becomes
“a sort of dictator” (1888)
- (2 January, 2012) Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837)
- (31 October, 2011) John
Adams on how absolute power intoxicates those who excercise that power
(1814)
- (14 June, 2010) Tocqueville
on the form of despotism the government would assume in democratic America
(1840)
- (15 March, 2010) Jefferson
on how Congress misuses the inter-state commerce and general welfare clauses
to promote the centralization of power (1825)
- (7 December, 2009) Jefferson
feared that it would only be a matter of time before the American system
of government degenerated into a form of “elective despotism” (1785)
- (25 February, 2008) George
Washington warns that the knee jerk reaction of citizens to problems is
to seek a solution in the creation of a “new monarch”(1786)
- (21 February, 2007) George
Washington warns the nation in his Farewell Address, that love of power
will tend to create a real despotism in America unless proper checks and
balances are maintained to limit government power (1796)
- (19 December, 2005) Thomas
Jefferson opposed vehemently the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 which
granted the President enormous powers showing that the government had become
a tyranny which desired to govern with "a rod of iron" (1798)
- (2 November, 2004) James
Bryce believed that the Founders intended that the American President would
be “a reduced and improved copy of the English king” (1885)
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Quotations 
