John Adams quote: “What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?”

“Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

What I Believe (1938)
Context: Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support. It does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the bossers and the bossed — as an efficiency-regime tends to do. The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people", who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy.

“In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, — if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Speech to the Constitutional Convention (September 17, 1787); reported in James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E. H. Scott (1893), p. 742.
Constitutional Convention of 1787

“The dominant form of government in the world today is dictatorship. Further throughout history, dictatorship has been the commonest form of government, indeed, for much of history the only form of government in the world.”

Gordon Tullock (1922–2014) American economist

"Industrial Organization and Rent Seeking in Dictatorships"

“Whether there can be love without esteem?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Oh yes, thou dear, pure one! Love is of many kinds. Rousseau proves that by his reasoning and still better by his example. La pauvre Maman and Madame N____ love in very different fashions. But I believe there are many kinds of love which do not appear in Rousseau’s life. You are very right in saying that no true and enduring love can exist without cordial esteem; that every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble soul. One word about pietism. Pietists place religion chiefly in externals; in acts of worship performed mechanically, without aim, as bond-service to god; in orthodoxy of opinion; and they have this among other characteristic marks, that they give themselves more solicitude about other’s piety than their own. It is not right to hate these men,-we should hate no one, but to me they are very contemptible, for their character implies the most deplorable emptiness of the head, and the most sorrowful perversion of the heart. Such my dear friend never can be; she cannot become such, even were it possible-which it is not-that her character were perverted; she can never become such, her nature has too much reality in it. You trust in Providence, your anticipation of a future life, are wise, and Christian. I hope, I may venture to speak of myself, that no one will take me to be a pietist or stiff formalist, but I know no feeling more thoroughly interwoven with my soul than these are.
Johann Fichte Letter to Johanna Rahn from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's popular works: Memoir and The Nature of the Scholar https://archive.org/stream/johanngottlieb00fichuoft#page/14/mode/1up

“Have we despised what the world esteems and esteemed what it despises? Have we fled what it wants and wanted what it flees? Have we loved what it hates and hated what it loves?”

Louis Tronson (1622–1700) French Roman Catholic priest

Avons-nous pour cela méprisé ce qu'il estime, et estimé ce qu'il méprise? Avons nous fui ce qu'il recherche , et recherché ce qu'il fuit? Avons-nous aimé ce qu'il hait, et haï ce qu'il aime?
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets, p. 321 http://books.google.com/books?id=esY9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA321
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets [Examination of Conscience upon Special Subjects] (1690)

“What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 217

“Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Liebe, Arbeit und Wissen sind die Quellen unseres Lebens. Sie sollen es auch regieren.
His personal motto; the German phrase is found in the preamble of Charakteranalyse (1971 [1933]); the English translation was used at least as early as The Function of the Orgasm (1948), a translation of Die Funktion des Orgasmus (1927).

“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

“A limited democracy might indeed be the best protector of individual liberty and be better than any other form of limited government, but an unlimited democracy is probably worse than any other form of unlimited government, because its government loses the power even to do what it thinks right if any group on which its majority depends thinks otherwise. If Mrs. Thatcher said that free choice is to be exercised more in the market place than in the ballot box, she has merely uttered the truism that the first is indispensable for individual freedom, while the second is not: free choice can at least exist under a dictatorship that can limit itself but not under the government of an unlimited democracy which cannot.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times http://coreyrobin.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/hayek-letter-to-the-times-july-11-1978.pdf (11 July 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s

“Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Context: Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

“What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?”

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