I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian....

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than...

Tony Blair believed in a consumerist idea of democracy.

Gandhi has asked that the British Government should walk out of India and leave the Indian people to settle differences among themselves, even if it means chaos and confusion.

Libertarians regard the state as the Supreme, the eternal, the best organized aggressor against the persons and property of the mass of the public. All states everywhere, whether democratic,...

I personally believe that a democratic society is morally entitled to set and enforce a limit on the number of new immigrants admitted each year.

I have a good relationship with Mandela. But I am not Mandela's product. I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy.

Political freedom is to be cherished indeed. But there is no political freedom that is not indissolubly bound to the inner personal freedom of the individuals who make up that nation: no liberty of a...

The problem is that when government controls the economy, those who can influence government keep winning, and everybody else just stays the same.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

I have always been a firm believer in the longstanding American principle of having the right to bear arms and I will remain committed to see that this freedom is not infringed upon, revoked, or...

In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This is equally true of Sovietism, of China and of Iran, and in our time it has...

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

Everyone with this writ may be a tyrant; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner, also, may control, imprison, or murder anyone within the realm.

But Socialism, alone, can bring self-determination of their peoples.

I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an Emperor or a King my republican feelings and principles forbid it the simplicity of our system of government forbids...

Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.

The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.

People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own...

In this work I have received the opposition of a number of men who only advocate the unobtainable because the immediately possible is beyond their moral courage, administrative ability, and their...

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

The independence of the economic sphere was a tenet of faith with Liberalism.

The new republic should be based on diversity, respect and equal rights for all.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder, their Constitution a miracle, their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.

Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free no one ever will.

The surest way to prevent seditions... is to take away the matter of them.

It is a confession of the weakness of our own faith in the righteousness of our cause when we attempt to suppress by law those who do not agree with us. Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York after WWI