“That men should understand that governments do not exist by divine right, and that arbitrary government is the violation of divine right, was no doubt the medicine suited to the malady under which Europe languished.”

— John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Context: That men should understand that governments do not exist by divine right, and that arbitrary government is the violation of divine right, was no doubt the medicine suited to the malady under which Europe languished. But although the knowledge of this truth might become an element of salutary destruction, it could give little aid to progress and reform. Resistance to tyranny implied no faculty of constructing a legal government in its place. Tyburn tree may be a useful thing; but it is better still that the offender should live for repentance and reformation. The principles which discriminate in politics between good and evil, and make states worthy to last, were not yet found.

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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton 112

British politician and historian 1834–1902

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“Now, what is meant by the union between Church and State? ... I understand by it that authority is to be not merely political; that Government is to be not merely an affair of force, but is to recognize its responsibility to the Divine Power. Sir, we have discarded the divine right of Kings, and properly discarded it, because the divine right of Kings led to the abuse of supernatural power by individuals; but an intelligent age will never discard the divine right of Government. If Government is not divine, it is nothing. It is a mere affair of the police-office, of the tax-gatherer, of the guard-room.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1868/apr/03/adjourned-debate#column_917 in the House of Commons (3 April 1868)

“The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Preface.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870)

“Democracy is not a tearing down; it is a building up. It is not denial of the divine right of kings; it supplements that same with the assertion of the divine right of all men. It does not destroy; it fulfills. It is the consummation of all theories of government, the spirit of which all the nations of the earth must yield. It is the great constructive course of the ages.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Equal Rights (1920)
Context: Democracy is not a tearing down; it is a building up. It is not denial of the divine right of kings; it supplements that same with the assertion of the divine right of all men. It does not destroy; it fulfills. It is the consummation of all theories of government, the spirit of which all the nations of the earth must yield. It is the great constructive course of the ages. It is the alpha and omega of man's relation to man, the beginning and the end. There is, and can be, no more doubt of the triumphs of democracy in human affairs than there is of the triumph of gravitation in the physical world. The only question is how and when. Its foundation lays hold upon eternity. It is unconcerned with the idolatry, or despotism, or treason, or rebellion, or betrayal, but bows in reverence before Moses, or Hamden, or Washington, or Lincoln, or the lights that shone on Calvary.

“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

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“The natural right of property far from being protected, is systematically violated, and both government and law seem to exist chiefly or solely, in order to protect and organize the most efficacious means of protecting the violation….”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), p. 53

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Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Defunct Foundations of the Republic,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=528 WorldNetDaily.com, January 1, 2010.
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“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Speech in the United States House of Representatives (12 January 1848)
1840s
Context: Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

“XXIX. When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

"Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Maximilien Robespierre" (24 April, 1793)
Original: (fr) XXIX. Dans tout état libre, la loi doit surtout défendre la liberté publique et individuelle contre l'autorité de ceux qui la gouvernent. Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.

“Demonstrators for a government takeover of medicine have a right to discuss their demands, but no right to enact these demands. … 'Rights, as our founding fathers conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but freedoms of action.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Authentic Asstroturfers,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=510 WorldNetDaily.com and Taki’s Magazine, August 14, 2009.
2000s, 2009

“Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.”

Guy De Maupassant book Sur l'eau

Sur l’eau (1888)

“That men should understand that governments do not exist by divine right, and that arbitrary government is the violation of divine right, was no doubt the medicine suited to the malady under which Europe languished.”

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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton 112

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