“The Americans are the first people whom heaven has favoured with an opportunity of deliberating upon and choosing forms of government under which they should live.”

— John Jay

Charge to the Grand Jury of Ulster County http://www.johnjayinstitute.org/resources/publications/john-jays-charge-to-the-grand-jury-of-ulster-county-1777-and-charge-to-the/ (1777).
1770s

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American politician and a founding father of the United Sta… 1745–1829

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“I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens… for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand… a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

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“If the American people are not fit for popular government, and if they should of right be the servants and not the masters of those whom they themselves put in office, then Lincoln's work was wasted and the whole system of government upon which this great democratic republic rests is a failure.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)

“This lesson was firmly in the minds of those who made the American Constitution. They proposed to adopt institutions under which the people should be supreme, and the government should derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. They were determined to be a sovereign people under a government having such powers as they from time to time should confer upon it by a written constitution. They did not propose to be under the tyranny of either the executive or the legislature.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

“How important are the responsibilities, which now devolve upon me I fully realise, and it is my intention to prove by performance rather than by words. The inhertitance to which I succeed is no ordinary one, and I appreciate what Mysore owes to the administration of wise statesmen, and the care of British Government under the regency of my revered mother…. may heaven grant me the ability as well the ambition to make a full and wise use of the great opportunities of my position, and to govern, without fear or favour for the lasting happiness of my people.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

In his speech on being installed as the Maharaja of Mysroe at the age of 18Quoted in [Vikram Sampath, SPLENDOURS OF ROYAL MYSORE (PB), http://books.google.com/books?id=3aFmtr4MdLQC&pg=PT492, Rupa & Company, 978-81-291-1535-5, 492–]

“I shall never, under any circumstances, agree to a representative form of government because I consider it harmful to the people whom God has entrusted to my care.”

Nicholas II of Russia (1868–1918) Emperor of All the Russias, Grand Duke of Finland and King of Poland By the Grace of God

As quoted in https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/quotations-imperial-russia-tsarism/
1890s

“Our American government was the result of an effort to establish institutions under which the people as a whole should have the largest possible advantages. Class and privilege were outlawed, freedom and opportunity were guaranteed. They undertook to provide conditions under which service would be adequately rewarded, and where the people would own their own property and control their own government. They had no other motive. They were actuated by no other purpose.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)
Context: Our American government was the result of an effort to establish institutions under which the people as a whole should have the largest possible advantages. Class and privilege were outlawed, freedom and opportunity were guaranteed. They undertook to provide conditions under which service would be adequately rewarded, and where the people would own their own property and control their own government. They had no other motive. They were actuated by no other purpose. If we are to maintain what they established, it is important to understand the foundation on which they built, and the claims by which they justified the sovereign rights and royal estate of every American citizen.

“No American should be forced to choose between the dictates of the federal government and the tenets of their faith.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

What Trump understands about religious liberty in America? http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/05/04/what-trump-understands-about-religious-liberty-in-america.html (May 4, 2017)
2010s, 2017, May

“Every possible effort should be made to stop recruiting for the Armed Forces. This may, and probably would, lead to some form of conscription being proposed or introduced. Thus would be provided a most favourable political platform upon which to fight the National Government.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Forward, 3 October, 1936, quoted in Talus, Your Alternative Government (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1945), p. 36.

“The union of the States of Germany into a form of government similar in many respects to that of the American Union is an event that can not fail to touch deeply the sympathies of the people of the United States. This union has been brought about by the long-continued, persistent efforts of the people, with the deliberate approval of the governments and people of twenty-four of the German States, through their regularly constituted representatives.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Message regarding the unification of Germany http://millercenter.org/president/grant/speeches/message-regarding-unification-of-germany (7 February 1871)
1870s

“From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen. I insisted that there was no safety for him or for anybody else in America outside the American government; that to guard, protect, and maintain his liberty the freedman should have the ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country; and this was now the word for the hour with me, and the word to which the people of the North willingly listened when I spoke. Hence, regarding as I did the elective franchise as the one great power by which all civil rights are obtained, enjoyed, and maintained under our form of government, and the one without which freedom to any class is delusive if not impossible, I set myself to work with whatever force and energy I possessed to secure this power for the recently-emancipated millions.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/dougl92/dougl92.html (1892), p. 460.
1890s, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)

“The Americans are the first people whom heaven has favoured with an opportunity of deliberating upon and choosing forms of government under which they should live.”

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