Frame of Government (1682)
Context: Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.
Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, “Unlimited Government” (Dec. 29, 1961).
Source: The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
Letter to John Wayles Eppes (9 September 1814). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://files.libertyfund.org/files/807/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 425-426
1810s
Context: [... ] Congress itself can punish Alexandria, by repealing the law which made it a town, by discontinuing it as a port of entry or clearance, and perhaps by suppressing it’s banks. But I expect all will go off with impunity. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only.
Rampart Institute, p. 431
The Fundamental of Liberty (1988)
A speech delivered at Niblo’s Saloon, in New York, on the 15 of March, 1837.
The Works of Daniel Webster, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851, vol. 1, p. 358 http://books.google.com/books?id=9DMOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA358&lpg=PA358&dq=%22They+mean+to+govern+well%3B+but+they+mean+to+govern%22&source=bl&ots=oJ6IWDhF2B&sig=iYuDQMQjnHzxMjzbd6rJohrXVrQ&hl=en&ei=xqYqTKDpFML-nAeF2omjAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCwQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=%22They%20mean%20to%20govern%20well%3B%20but%20they%20mean%20to%20govern%22&f=false.
Context: There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters.
As quoted in Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer, L.K. Samuels, editor, Freeland Press and Rampart Institute, Santa Ana: CA, Chap. 5, p. 70
“It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.”
Source: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
“Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.”
