“A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay”

— Simón Bolívar

Letter from Jamaica (Summer 1815)
Context: A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 31, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay" by Simón Bolívar?

Simón Bolívar17

Venezuelan military and political leader, South American li… 1783–1830

Related quotes

“Dependence on the State became a virtue; dependence on oneself was derided as ‘rugged individualism.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 154

“Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 364

“There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

The Freeholder, no. 5.

“Today's banalities apparently gain in profundity if one states that the wisdom of the past, for all its virtues, belongs to the past. The arrogance of those who come later preens itself with the notion that the past is dead and gone. … The modern mind can no longer think thought, only can locate it in time and space. The activity of thinking decays to the passivity of classifying.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 1

“Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it never may be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, Government shall itself consume the whole residue of what it was instituted to guard.”

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

Thomas Jefferson's First State of the Union Address (8 December 1801)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

“In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Context: In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed creativity; and God] is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In [[monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed The Absolute. In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.

“Amnesty, n. The state’s magnaminity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Mercantilism is based upon the idea that a nation's wealth and security depend upon its ability to regulate and control its external trade at the expense of others.”

Peter Dicken (1938) British geographer

Source: Global Shift (2003) (Fourth Edition), Chapter 5, The State, p. 132

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.”

Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly

“The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished.””

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

It dies out.
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (1901)

“A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Simón Bolívar17

Related quotes

Related topics