Search Results in Quotes
29 results for your search term: “origin of government”.
David Hume on the origin of government in warfare, and the “perpetual struggle” between Liberty and Power (1777)
It is probable, that the first ascendant of one man over multitudes begun during a state of war; ...
James Otis on the right of the people to alter their government (1764)
The form of government is by nature and by right so far left to the individuals of each society, ...
Guizot on man’s unquenchable desire for liberty and free political institutions (1820-22)
At all times men have endeavoured to limit the power which they regarded as perfectly legitimate....
James Mill on Government Power
“Of the laws of nature, on which the condition of man depends, that which is attended with the gr...
Thomas Paine asks how it is that established governments came into being, his answer, is "banditti of ruffians" seized control and turned themselves into monarchs (1792)
It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the world, could have commence...
James Wilson asks if man exists for the sake of government, or is government instituted for the sake of man? (1791)
I here close my examination into those natural rights, which, in my humble opinion, it is the bus...
Adam Smith and the Uniform Quest for Betterment
This frugality and good conduct, however, is upon most occasions, it appears from experience, suf...
Molinari defends the right to property against the socialists who want to overthrow it, and the conservatives who defend it poorly (1849)
Society, according to the Economists of the eighteenth century, is organized on the basis of natu...
Tocqueville warns how administrative despotism might come to a democracy like America (1840)
After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him...
Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837)
Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of ...
Guizot on liberty and reason (1851)
Power proves its legitimacy, that is to say, its conformity to the eternal reason, by making itse...
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)
Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may as...
Milton Friedman and the Free Society
As you may recall, Dicey dates the change in public opinion in Britain away from individualism an...
Tocqueville on the form of despotism the government would assume in democratic America (1840)
After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him...
Spencer on voting as a poor instrument for protecting our rights to life, liberty, and property (1879)
… the acquirement of so-called political rights is by no means equivalent to the acquirement of r...
Shaftesbury on the need for liberty to promote the liberal arts (1712)
[W]ithout a Publick Voice, knowingly guided and directed, there is nothing which can raise a true...
John Stuart Mill on “the sacred right of insurrection” (1862)
But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that the South had a right to s...
Say on a person’s property right in their own “industrious faculties” (1819)
The property a man has in his own industry, is violated, whenever he is forbidden the free exerci...
Nassau Senior argues that government is based upon extortion (1854)
It is obvious, however, that the division of labour on which government is founded, is subject to...
Rousseau on the natural tendency of governments to degenerate into tyranny (1762)
First, when the prince ceases to administer the State in accordance with the laws, and usurps the...