“Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our Revolution. They existed before.”
Refering to the French Revolution
1850s, Third Annual Message to Congress (1852)
Context: In less than ten years her Government was changed from a republic to an empire, and finally, after shedding rivers of blood, foreign powers restored her exiled dynasty and exhausted Europe sought peace and repose in the unquestioned ascendency of monarchical principles. Let us learn wisdom from her example. Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our Revolution. They existed before. They were planted in the free charters of self-government under which the English colonies grew up, and our Revolution only freed us from the dominion of a foreign power whose government was at variance with those institutions. But European nations have had no such training for self-government, and every effort to establish it by bloody revolutions has been, and must, without that preparation, continue to be a failure. Liberty, unregulated by law, degenerates into anarchy, which soon becomes the most horrid of all despotisms. Our policy is wisely to govern ourselves, and thereby to set such an example of national justice, prosperity, and true glory, as shall teach to all nations the blessings of self-government, and the unparalleled enterprise and success of a free people.
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Millard Fillmore 6
American politician, 13th President of the United States (i… 1800–1874Related quotes
Grover Norquist via Twitter, 02 Jan 2016, 23:12 UTC. https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/683425783470239744.
2015
The Spirit of Revolt (1880)
Context: One courageous act has sufficed to upset in a few days the entire governmental machinery, to make the colossus tremble; another revolt has stirred a whole province into turmoil, and the army, till now always so imposing, has retreated before a handful of peasants armed with sticks and stones. The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought they begin dimly to perceive that a few energetic efforts will be sufficient to throw it down. Hope is born in their hearts, and let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope, the hope of victory, which makes revolutions.
The government resists; it is savage in its repressions. But, though formerly persecution killed the energy of the oppressed, now, in periods of excitement, it produces the opposite result. It provokes new acts of revolt, individual and collective, it drives the rebels to heroism; and in rapid succession these acts spread, become general, develop. The revolutionary party is strengthened by elements which up to this time were hostile or indifferent to it.
But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.
"On Anarchy", in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 22
On conclusion of case Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union — cited in [Goldsmith, Jack L., Tim Wu, 2006, Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World, Oxford University Press, 22, 0195152662]
Speech to Conservative Party Conference (13 October 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107789
Third term as Prime Minister
“When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.”
(Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 264]
2000s, 2003, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (November 2003)