A Republic Quotes

#1. This is a case if the President is permitted to be above the law, then we no longer have a republic.

James Bovard

#2. Citizenship is what makes a republic - monarchies can get along without it.

Mark Twain

#3. The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn't believe it gets one in the neck.

Alfred Doblin

#4. When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.

Ron Paul

#5. Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

Alan Moore

#6. It should therefore be difficult in a republic to declare war; but not to make peace.

Joseph Story

#7. As you know, the Australian Labour Party is committed to turning the country into a republic. We've not stipulated a timeline for doing that. We are sensitive to the other priorities we've got as a nation and in the world, but in time the country will head in that direction.

Kevin Rudd

#8. A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.

Charles Darwin

#9. It is not only our duty to America, but also to Ireland. We could not hope to succeed in our effort to make Ireland a Republic without the moral and material support of the liberty-loving citizens of these United States.

Thomas Francis Meagher

#10. I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.

Andrew Jackson

#11. The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

Thomas Carlyle

#12. The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens.

Andrew Johnson

#13. A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.

Fisher Ames

#14. RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable - omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.

Ambrose Bierce

#15. The only foundation for useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion.

Thomas Jefferson

#16. America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.

Mark Twain

#17. Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.

Victor Hugo

#18. I want to see my kids grow up in a world that I grew up in, which was it had imagination and it had hope. And all of a sudden, I see that being dissolved, and I see, as a country, as a people, we are a republic. We are a democracy.

Craig T. Nelson

#19. How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven and hell are all a monarchy?

Alan W. Watts

#20. A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#21. John Stuart Mill declared that tyranny makes men cynical. He did not know that a Republic makes them silent.

Lu Xun

#22. The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a country ... There is not even any systematic instruction given on political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic.

Harriet Martineau

#23. I think we are all children even if we have old bodies and we should make a republic that runs on the wonder of children whether we are old or young children.

Brian Doyle

#24. A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?

George Washington

#25. I have always thought that the notion of a Republic is a noble one, dating back to the glory days of Hellas, which all D'Angelines regard fondly as the last Golden Era before the coming of Elua. Now, seeing it in action, I was not so sure.

Jacqueline Carey

#26. The allegiance of the citizen, in the only sense in which the word can be tolerated in a republic, is due to the law. What idea other men may have of a law higher than the supreme law, I know not. Like the notion of the Stoics concerning Fate, it is perfectly incomprehensible.

James L. Petigru

#27. As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.

Baron De Montesquieu

#28. It's the duty of a Republic soldier to be loyal to the end, and I'm still a soldier. I will be one until I die.

Marie Lu

#29. A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy - "A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."

Benjamin Franklin

#30. The total amount paid out in dividends is roughly equal to the amount lost in trading and investment advice, so net dividends to shareholders are zero. This is a very peculiar way to run a republic.

Charlie Munger

#31. A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.

James Madison

#32. [the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.

Fisher Ames

#33. If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India, then I claim verity for my picture in which the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last.

Mahatma Gandhi

#34. Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.

Samuel Adams

#35. I've always voted Republican because America is exactly that, a republic. You can't expect much leadership with a Democrat behind the desk their not even close to dual efficient.

Audrey Meadows

#36. Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Benjamin Franklin

#37. Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.

Otto Von Bismarck

#38. In a republic the first rule for the guidance of the citizen is obedience of the law.

Calvin Coolidge

#39. When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

Thomas Jefferson

#40. A republic - if you can keep it - is about limitation, and for good reason, because we are mortal and our actions are imperfect.

Mike Pence

#41. No good government but what is republican ... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'

John Adams

#42. As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit or belief, they were called a Republic.

Evelyn Waugh

#43. A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties.

Franklin Pierce

#44. We all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues.

Charles Dickens

#45. The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government.

Walter E. Williams

#46. In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#47. The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: It exists in spite of its ministers.

Heinrich Heine

#48. Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.

Baron De Montesquieu

#49. We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other section by bayonets.

Horace Greeley

#50. Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme.

Harriet Martineau

#51. The only foundation for ... a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.

Benjamin Rush

#52. An empire that extends itself selectively is just being prudent about its own limitations. A republic that supports democratization selectively is another matter.

Noah Feldman

#53. It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.

James Madison

#54. For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free.

Anatole France

#55. All of us are citizens in a republic much larger than the Republic of America. It is the Republic of Letters, a realm of the mind that extends everywhere, without police, national boundaries, or disciplinary frontiers.

Robert Darnton

#56. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic ...

Joseph Story

#57. A Republic, if you can keep it.

Benjamin Franklin

#58. What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.

Thomas Paine

#59. Ours is a representative republic with a Constitution in which is recognized the natural law and the natural rights of man. It is a republic with a spiritual foundation characterized by freedom - freedom for the individual and for his society.

Ezra Taft Benson

#60. For PEOPLE to rule themselves in a REPUBLIC , they must have virtue;for a TYRANT to rule in a TYRANNY ,he must use FEAR.

William J. Federer

#61. How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?

Alan Watts

#62. A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.

Reinhold Niebuhr

#63. As a Republic governed through the utilization of a democratic process, elections are necessary in order to give every United States citizen a voice in the governing of this great nation.

Byron Goines

#64. The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

Thomas Jefferson

#65. South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.

James L. Petigru

#66. This [for opposition leaders to claim royal lineage], in a world ruled by a republic, was what revolution had come to mean.

Tom Holland

#67. You are a republic of voices tonight. Unfortunately, that republic is Italy.

Jay McInerney

#68. There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.

Alan Watts

#69. [To the suggestion that Great Britain might someday want a Republic:] We'll go quietly.

Queen Elizabeth II

#70. MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.

Ambrose Bierce

#71. Nothing is more dangerous to liberty than the power of entailed art and ideas. The very soul of a republic is the common citizen's inalienable access to knowledge.

Lewis Hyde

#72. [In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places.

James Monroe

#73. If the Czar will not accord our people these desired liberties, then a revolution will bring about a republic which will assure us our rights.

Jacob Schiff

#74. An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off; it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.

Nancy Mitford

#75. A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.

Alexander Hamilton

#76. And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic.

Robert W. Welch Jr.

#77. In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.

Baron De Montesquieu

#78. Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."

Gore Vidal

#79. It is a reality attested by all history that if a republic assumes imperial functions it will not remain a republic.

Felix Morley

#80. Every Arab 'republic' has been a republic of fear, but only Saddam Hussein's Iraq surpassed the Assads' Syria in number of victims.

Elliott Abrams

#81. We're going to form a republic where the people of each district and the Capitol can elect their own representatives to be their voice in a centralized government. Don't look so suspicious; it's worked before.

Suzanne Collins

#82. I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#83. Unlike other countries, it was founded on written proclamations. America is an ideal as well as a republic. Its documents are open to revisions. They're works in progress. There's an invitation to participate.

Christopher Hitchens

#84. Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectre which will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard the future. Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the man-people as Jesus Christ is the man-God.

Victor Hugo

#85. Now one of two things is true: Either a republic is a desirable form of government, or else it is not.

Anna Howard Shaw

#86. I think it's a great shame that America stopped being a republic and became an empire.

Marianne Faithfull

#87. A republic may be called the climate of civilization.

Victor Hugo

#88. We need to discuss the basis of a new form of trust built on a meaningful form of citizenship appropriate for a republic.

Michael D. Higgins

#89. How do you steal a Republic? By convincing its people that they cannot govern themselves - that freedom is their enemy and that fear is their ally.

Chuck Wendig

#90. People without hope are a dangerous crowd, even in a republic.

Joe Abercrombie

#91. Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is wrong. There is no other time.

Mark Twain

#92. In the Roman commonwealth, even on the conversion of the monarchy into a republic, the old was as far as possible retained.

Theodor Mommsen

#93. The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.

Baron De Montesquieu

#94. The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.

James Madison

#95. I am a Republican because the United States is a republic, and the views we hold represent the foundation our country was built on so many years ago.

Maidie Norman

#96. I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom.

Helen Clark

#97. Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#98. And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction.

Robert W. Welch Jr.

#99. Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.

Robert Walpole

#100. You get one chance to do something about native title. You get perhaps one chance in your life to do something about a republic. You get one chance, your chance, to build a piece of the political architecture in the Pacific. I wasn't going to give those up.

Paul Keating