It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

A Government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear.

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the ''money touch,'' but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

The less government we have the better.