“The worst of all states is the people's state.”
Le pire des États, c'est l'État populaire.
Cinna, act II, scene i.
Cinna (1641)
Original
Le pire des États, c'est l'État populaire.
Cinna (1641)
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Pierre Corneille 81
French tragedian 1606–1684Related quotes

1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Context: Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Le plus pressé, ce n'est pas que l'État enseigne, mais qu'il laisse enseigner. Tous les monopoles sont détestables, mais le pire de tous, c'est le monopole de l'enseignement.
In 'Cursed Money!', final thought.
The Bastiat-Proudhon Debate on Interest (1849–1850)
Source: What Is Money?
2010s, American Contempt for Liberty (2015)

To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.
The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution... They are not among the powers specially enumerated...
Opinion against the constitutionality of a National Bank (1791), also quoted in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 3, p. 146
1790s

"Tucker's Revelation," in Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, p. 249

“What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.”
"To See Ourselves as Others See Us", in Time, June 16, 1986.

Orgini e dottrina del fascismo, Rome: Libreria del Littorio, (1929). Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, A. James Gregor, translator and editor, Transaction Publishers (2003) p. 28