Quotes about republic
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“Do you solemnly swear to serve the Republic in thought, in word, and in deed; to defend its citizens, resist its enemies, and champion its justice with the whole of your heart, your strength, and your mind; to foreswear all other allegiances; to obey all lawful orders of your superior officers; to uphold the highest ideals of the Republic, and at all times to conduct yourself to the credit of the Republic as its commissioned officer, by witness of, aid from, and faith in the force?”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Mace Windu's Oath of Office, p. 213
Shatterpoint (2004)

Faith, Justice, Law, Time

“The common view that internal freedom makes for humane and moral international behavior is supported neither by evidence nor by reason. The United States has a long history of imposing oppressive terrorist regimes in regions of the world within the reach of its power, such as the Caribbean and Central American sugar and banana republics […]. Since World War II, with the great extension of U. S. power, it has borne a heavy responsibility for the spread of a plague of neofascism, state terrorism, torture and repression through large parts of the undeveloped world. The United States has globalized the “banana republic.” This has occurred despite some modest ideological strain because the developments serve the needs of powerful and dominant interests, state and private, within the United States itself.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 1.

War, World, Behavior, History

“I may be a minority of one in advocating that one should NOT separate science and politics—partly because I am old enough to remember the Weimar Republic before 1934…”

Edwin Ernest Salpeter (1924–2008) American astronomer

[Edwin E. Salpeter, The initial mass function 50 years later, Edvige Corbelli, Francesco Palla, Hans Zinnecker, Springer, 2005, 1402034075, 10]

Science

“[S]lavery was neither a backward nor a dying system in the 1850s. It was aggressive, dynamic, and mobile, and by pandering to the racial prejudices of a white republic starved for labor, it was perfectly capable of expansion.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

Source: 2010s, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012), Chapter One

“Our constitution, in essence, represents our national philosophy. The Constitution voices the social, economic and political covenant entered into by and for ourselves as equal citizens of our Republic.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

His broadcast to the nation on the eve of the Republic day on 25 January 1996, in: p. 244.
Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001

“When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

"In the News" (June 13, 1941)

Death, Democracy

“Legally and to outward seeming the American President is the successor of Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and limited by the Convention of Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs from the Magistrate imagined by the Fathers of the Republic as widely as Monarchy from Democracy…”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Democracy, Imagination, Reality

“Take the National Organization for Women — please! They've embarrassed me enough over the years, and now I'm going to give them a taste of their own medicine. They were always so holier-than-thou, systematically getting rid of everyone who wasn't just like them: white, upper-middle class, straight (or closeted), sex-phobic Democratic party apologists. As you can imagine, that's not a huge group anymore — but they still manage to hang onto a name that insists that they represent half the population!
Well, it's all over, sweethearts. I'm taking away your library card, I'm stripping badges and I'm not returning phone calls. Calling NOW feminists is like calling the People's Republic of China communist: Marx and Emma Goldman are both rolling in their graves.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

" This shameless hussy ballbuster Clinton scandals http://www.salon.com/health/sex/col/brig/1998/03/13/nc_13brig/index.html", Salon, March 13, 1998.

Women, People, Sex, Imagination

“We have reached the end of the Roman republic. We have seen it rule for five hundred years in Italy and in the countries on the Mediterranean; we have seen it brought to rum in politics and morals, religion and literature, not through outward violence but through inward decay, and thereby making room for the new monarchy of Caesar. There was in the world, as Caesar found it, much of the noble heritage of past centuries and an infinite abundance of pomp and glory, but little spirit, still less taste, and least of all true delight in life. It was indeed an old world; and even the richly-gifted patriotism of Caesar [b] could not make it young again. The dawn does not return till after the night has fully set in and run its course. But yet with him there came to the sorely harassed peoples on the Mediterranean a tolerable evening after the sultry noon; and when at length after a long historical night a new day dawned once more for the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-movement commenced their race towards new and higher goals, there were found among them not a few, in which the seed sown by Caesar had sprung up, and which were and are indebted to him for their national individuality.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

/b
Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
Last paragraph of the last volume
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, People, World, Religion

“By holding firmly to a pessimistic, realistic view of what is and is not possible in a society of different ethnicities, we might have maintained the principles of a free republic, and saved ourselves much trouble and expense. In the world at large, diversity causes nothing but problems.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

World, Problem

“In my early 20s, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted. And if you're just getting to know yourself while you're in a serious relationship—well, it's almost like when you go through clothing phases where it's all Banana Republic all the time, and then it's something else. It's like you're trying on different personalities to see what fits, but there is that real you in there somewhere.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

InStyle magazine (2009)

Time, Personality, Clothes

“Rankovich wants us to turn our borders into a roadhouse with two gates through which Yugoslav, Italian and Greek agents and weapons could go in and out freely, without visas, in order to bring us their "culture of cutthroats", so that Tito may realize his dream of turning Albania into the seventh republic of Yugoslavia, so that the reactionary Italian bourgeoisie may put into action for the third time their predatory intentions towards Albania, or so that the Greek monarcho-fascists may realize their crazy dream of grabbing southern Albania. Because we have not permitted and will never permit such a thing, we are "warmongers."”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

They know very well that if they violate our borders they will have to fight us and the whole socialist camp.
Speeches, Moscow Address

Dreams, Time, Fight

“Armenia categorically rejects the resumption of military hostilities in Nagorno Karabakh as an option. In case Azerbaijan resorts to military aggression, Armenia will have no other choice but to recognize the Nagorno Karabakh Republic de jure and to employ all its capabilities to ensure the security of the people of Artsakh.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

Remarks by The President of the Republic of Armenia H.E. Serzh Sargsyan at the OSCE Meeting of the Heads of State or Government (Summit) http://www.president.am/events/news/eng/?pn=9&id=1339/ (December 02, 2010)

Hostility, People

“This country has become an independent Republic with complete sovereignty. This has been laid down in our Interim Constitution. This country is to be shared by the citizens, the Arabs and the Kurds. This entity is indivisible in any way. No one can divide nor disintegrate the Republic of Iraq from the North to the South and from the East to the West.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

The historical extempore speech at the Reserve Officers' College (1959)

Way, Country

“When confederation is realized, and the ideologies of North and South are propagandized in the course of free intercourse between the two sides, the Republic [DPRK] will not be affected in the slightest, because it is a unified state. But the South is an ideologically divided, liberal country, so if we extensively propagate Juche Thought and the superiority of our system we can win over at least half its citizens. As of now South Korea is twice our size in population terms. But once we win over half the South's people in a confederation, we will be two parts to the South's one. We would then win either a general election or a war.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

To Todor Zhivkov (30 October 1973), as quoted in 어둠이 된 햇볕은 어둠을 밝힐 수 없다 https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114533 (2001), p. 222

War, People, Parting, Country

“I told him (Zhang Zhijun) that this (daily massive protest) is pretty much what we (Republic of China government) experience in our daily lives. We are used to it. Now that he is head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, he has to understand Taiwan more.”

Wang Yu-chi (1969) Taiwanese politician

Wang Yu-chi (2014) cited in " CROSSING THE STRAIT: Protesters hurl paint at Chinese official’s convoy http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2014/06/29/2003593937" on Taipei Times, 29 June 2014

Understanding

“Some voices are calling on America to circle the wagons. Some are even saying that our enemies do worse, so we should respond in kind. The problem here is that this is America. This is a constitutional republic based on the rule of law and equal respect for all persons. We can’t pretend that we can bend the rules any which way.”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

From "Living Fearlessly in a Fearless World" Ignatieff Commencement Address to Whitman College (USA), 2004

Law, Way, Problem, Personality

“None of our republics would be anything if we weren't all together, but we have to create our history — our Yugoslavian socialist history, that is unique, in the future — that is our path; not touching the national rights of the some republics to preserve their own traditions, not at the expense of, but in the interest of the whole community, to mutually complete each other. That is what we want, and not the destruction of our unity.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Frequently quoted fragment of Tito's speech in Split 1962 Source: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7s7ldiX6lc Other

History, Communication, Future

“There was a beautiful row. You’ve really scared people, Hoddan! You deserve well of the republic! Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 2

People, Beauty, Personality

“The reduction of the executive power is the wish of neither the chambers nor the country…During all my magistracy, I will see, in accord with the responsible ministers, that the government of the republic maintains intact, under the control of parliament, the authority which it must have…It is possible for a people to be effectively pacific only on condition that they are always ready for war. A diminished France, a France exposed through her own fault to challenges or humiliations, would no longer be France.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Speech to the Chamber (20 February 1913), quoted in Gordon Wright, Raymond Poincaré and the French Presidency (New York: Octagon Books, 1967), pp. 64-65.

War, People, Country

“I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

Communication, Country

“Resistants were on the right side, Salò Republic's combatants on the wrong one. (…) One cannot equate who was fighting for a right cause of equality and freedom, and who, apart of goodfaith, was on the wrong side. (…) The judgement of the Right [on Fascism] have to be negative, due to freedom limitation. (…) We cannot deny ourselves history, and Fascism was a dictatorship that denied some fundamental freedoms.”

Gianfranco Fini (1952) Italian politician

cited in «La destra si riconosca nell'antifascismo» http://www.corriere.it/politica/08_settembre_13/fini_antifascismo_ccb8bcec-8175-11dd-95db-00144f02aabc.shtml, Il Corriere della Sera, 13 September 2008).

History, Freedom, Fight

“There is no doubt in our minds that the United States spares no effort to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran…The best indication of United States' support to a particular terrorist group […].”

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel (1945) Iranian politician

U.S. supports "terrorists", Iranian speaker says http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSISL21727120070405 Apr 5, 2007 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/753B743D-1980-47C6-A64C-625DD11B48A2.htm

Support, Effort

“The deceit of the Allies would have fateful consequences. Germany, even under Hitler, would never have risked invading France again if her rulers and her generals had known in advance that Britain and America would oppose it by military force. The U. S. Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Guarantee brought a certain responsibility on the United States for the subsequent course of events which pushed western Europe to the brink of destruction by Germany, though this was scarcely recognized in America. The Senate's action did not spare the American republic in the end. It only made the reconquest of western Europe from the Germans, when the Second World War came, infinitely more costly in American lives and treasure than it would have been had a President's word been honored in the first place by the Senate. The United States, supremely complacent in its shortsighted isolation, was lost as a factor in guarding the peace of Europe it had helped to win, and in which its fate would always be intertwined.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Fate, War, World, Peace

“There’s a reason why the French are on their fifth republic, and we are on our first, and that’s because we did not have a worship of reason at the beginning of the Founding as the French did, and then discovered that the purity, the Rousseauian idea is simply not one for the real world, or not one that avoids the guillotine…”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2015, Interview with Bill Kristol (2015)

World, Idea

“The proletariat thus shared its dictatorship with nobody. As to the question of the "majority", this never troubled Lenin much. In an article "Constitutional Illusions" (Aug. 1917; Works, vol. 25, p. 201) he wrote: "in time of revolution it is not enough to ascertain the ‘ will of the majority’ – you must prove to be stronger at the decisive moment and at the decisive place; you must win … We have seen innumerable examples of the better organized, more politically conscious and better armed minority forcing its will upon the majority and defeating it." (pg. 503) Trotsky, however, answers questions [in The Defence of Terrorism] that Lenin evaded or ignored. "Where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just your party that expresses the interests of historical development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of action." Trotsky replies: "This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open character; and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the Mensheviks and the S. R. s [Socialist Republics] … and they have disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us" (p. 101). This is one of the most enlightening theoretical formulations of Bolshevism, from which it appears that the "rightness" of a historical movement or a state is to be judged by whether its use of violence is successful. Noske did not succeed in crushing the German Communists, but Hitler did; it would thus follow from Trotsky’ s rule that Hitler "expressed the interests of historical development". Stalin liquidated the Trotskyists in Russia, and they disappeared – so evidently Stalin, and not Trotsky, stood for historical progress.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 510
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Men, War, Idea, Question

“Some still ask of us: what do you want? We answer with three words that summon up our entire program. Here they are…Italy, Republic, Socialization... Socialization is no other than the implantation of Italian Socialism…”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech given by Mussolini to a group of Milanese Fascist veterans (October 14, 1944), quoted in Revolutionary Fascism, Erik Norling, Lisbon, Finis Mundi Press (2011) pp.119-120.
1940s

“I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Veto of Dependent Pension Bill, July 5, 1888

“I think the first thing is to warn INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) to be careful. It is in their interest to be good neighbors to Nigerians and prove that the country was not a banana republic as the ruling party is making us believe.”

Chuba Okadigbo (1941–2003) Nigerian politician

Interview with Charles Onyekamuo, This Day, 2003-04-13

Thinking, Country

“In the Germany of the l920s, the Weimar Republic, both organismic biology and Gestalt psychology were part of a larger intellectual trend that saw itself as a protest movement against the increasing fragmentation and alienation of human nature. The entire Weimar culture was characterized by an antimechanistic outlook, a "hunger for wholeness". Organismic biology, Gestalt psychology, ecology, and, later on, general systems theory all grew out of this holistic zeitgeist.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 32.

Hunger, Nature, Parting

“The then-Japanese empire suppressed the people of the Republic of China and took over the authority against our will, and so ‘Japanese occupation’ should be a proper term to describe the period.”

Jiang Yi-huah (1960) Taiwanese politician

Jiang Yi-huah (2013) cited in " Jiang backs use of ‘Japanese occupation’ http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/07/24/2003568016/1" on Taipei Times, 24 July 2013

People

“Alike were they free from
Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics.
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows;
But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners;
There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Part I, section 1.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Fear, Heart, Envy

“What I want is to commune with the land. In company I couldn’t admit that. It’d sound too pompous, as though I were from Greenpeace or the People’s Republic of Berkeley.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

The Year of the Ransom (p. 643)
Time Patrol

People, Communication

“Socialism, or the Red Republic, is all one; for it would tear down the tricolour and set up the red flag. It would make penny pieces out of the Column Vendome. It would knock down the statue of Napoleon and raise up that of Marat in its stead. It would suppress the Académie, the Ecole Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honour. To the grand device Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, it would add “Ou la mort. It would bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labour, which gives to each one his bread. It would abolish property and family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in fever, and after the grand horrors which our fathers saw, we should have the horrible in all that was low and small.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Statement of May 1848, as quoted in Paris Under the Commune : Or, Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege (1871) by John Leighton

Men, God, Family, Art

“Everything depends on our succeeding in making the government firm and keeping it firm; whether it pleases us or not, there is nothing else and whoever can, should help. Who is unable to do so, or cannot bring himself to do it, should at least not disturb. But that is done by stupid newspaper articles which publicize the many weaknesses and ridiculous traits of the republic. That is also done by resolutions and speeches against the military decrees which emanate from the officers' side. It is very easy to say 'This is unheard of', and then to do nothing; it is very difficult to try to find usable timber among the ruins. Politics is the art of the possible, not what is desirable. My world looks different from that of to-day; but I will try and help that the two of us and another few Germans can live in the world of the future. To achieve this will be difficult enough, if it can be achieved.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to Mrs Seeckt (12 February 1919), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 31-32.

Stupidity, World, Art, Future

“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. … President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world. … No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are — a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Official statement: "SASC Chairman John Mccain on Trump-Putin Meeting" (16 July 2018) https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=press-releases&id=A99FDA26-673D-4560-B4EA-5AEDF0685EC5 2010s, 2018

People, Truth, World, Hope

“I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Letter to Arthur Brisbane (April 25, 1917); reported in Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters (1946), vol. 6, p. 36
1910s

People, Exercises, Imagination, Intelligence

“I thank you, fellow-citizens, for this magnificent demonstration. In so far as I represent in my heart and life the great doctrines for which you fought, I accept this demonstration as a tribute to my representative character. [Applause. ] In the strength of your hands, in the fervor of your hearts, in the firmness of your faith, in all that betokens greatness of manhood and nobleness of character, the Republic finds its security and glory. [Applause. ] I do not enter upon controverted questions. The time, the place, the situation forbid it. I respect the traditions that require me to speak only of those themes which elevate us all. Again I thank you for the kindness and enthusiasm of your greeting.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Tremendous cheering.
1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

Life, Faith, Question, Time

“Even two days after the Soviet Republic had been proclaimed, Hitler stood for election again, when the new regime conducted an election among Munich's soldier councils to ensure support for the Soviet Republic by Munich's military units. Hitler was now elected Deputy Battalion Representative and remained in the post for the entire lifespan of the Soviet Republic.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (2011), p. 251

Support

“I have often reflected that General Abrams, who had worked so hard to make the South Vietnamese armed forces capable of defending their country, at least had been spared the agony of seeing the death of the Republic of Vietnam. Westmoreland, on the other hand, was not spared that trauma, but seems over the years since the war to have become a national scapegoat, blamed for everything that went wrong in Vietnam, large or small, regardless of whether he had even a remote connection with the matter. It is a singularly fair and unsupported judgement. Many scores of senior American officials, civilian and military, including the author, contributed to our Vietnam mistakes, most of which have been so judged in hindsight. The real "blame", of course, must be laid squarely on the Hanoi regime and the North Vietnamese people, who demonstrated to the world that they had the will to prevail. Although it is a small comfort to Westmoreland, history is replete with the examples of one native son's being singled out, rightly or wrongly, as the person responsible for a national disaster.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 133-134

Death, War, People, World

“The following work is not a republication of a former treatise by the Author, entitled, "The Mathematical Analysis of Logic." Its earlier portion is indeed devoted to the same object, and it begins by establishing the same system of fundamental laws, but its methods are more general, and its range of applications far wider. It exhibits the results, matured by some years of study and reflection, of a principle of investigation relating to the intellectual operations, the previous exposition of which was written within a few weeks after its idea had been conceived.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. i; Preface, lead paragraph

Law, Mathematics, Idea, Study

“There is perhaps nothing more important in the world today than the steadiness and consistency of the foreign policy of this Republic. Too much depends on the United States for us to indulge in the luxury of either undue pessimism or premature optimism.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Principles

World, Optimism, Dependency

“For two years now, my office has had the honour and the privilege of sponsoring seminars on the functioning of government in this country for Eastern Europeans. These seminars and exchanges have brought together representatives from such nations as Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republic, Roumania, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Ukraine, all of them anxious to learn what makes a society as diverse as Canada work and how our institutions make it governable.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Afterword, p. 173
The House Of Commons At Work (1993)

Learning, Country

“Historians will look back in stupor at 20th and 21st century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, Suicide of a Superpower (2011)

World

“Haiti is a purely Negro Republic, and offers a good illustration of what the Negro accomplishes if left to himself, even though given all the advantages of easy access to European civilization. The republic of Santo Domingo occupies the other part of the same island; its hybrid population has more Spanish and less Negro blood but it is not by any means civilized.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

Parting

“And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge—and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. To do the latter is to do the former; the two things are inseparable. And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness, and cowardice and feebleness were saved from the accomplishment of their desires, the method that has only one alternative, the method that must in some cases still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and pointless things.”

H. G. Wells book Anticipations

Anticipations (1902)

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“The era of the masses, which follows the age of the republics, excites the feelings and dazzles the eyes. But even though the vision of this era denotes genuine freedom of the masses and their happy emancipation from the bonds of external authoritarian structures, it warns also of the dangers of a period of chaos and demagoguery, and the threat of a return to the authority of the individual, the sect and party, instead of the authority of the people. Theoretically, this is genuine democracy but, realistically, the strong always rules. That is, the stronger party in the society is the one that rules.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975)
The Green Book (1975)

Happiness, People, Age, Feeling

“The heroism of our soldiers is especially inspiring because most of them were in their 20s, inexperienced in the art of warfare, who answered the call of the motherland with unflinching courage - so very much like the revolutionaries who won freedom and founded Asia's First Republic.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: A Call for Heroism

Art, Courage, Freedom

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last… A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Essay in the American Daily Advertiser (28 August 1794)

Law

“And it is just as important for the Republicans to read Jefferson's words because they are as bad and perhaps worse than the Democrats. As the decades of Democratic abuse of America's young unfolded, the Republicans have been utterly craven, seeking to save the young, the Constitution, and the republic with words alone when in opposition, and doing virtually nothing substantive to arrest the republic's decline when they hold power. Today, the Republicans cower, mumble, and equivocate when called 'extremists' by those heroic Democratic champions of murdering the unborn, they follow like murmuring sheep the shrill martial words of Senators Graham and McCain and so get young Americans uselessly killed and maimed in wars that are either unnecessary or ones they have no intention of winning, and they are barely brave enough to raise economic points and words of I-told-you-so to oppose the coming, liberty-killing indentured servitude of America's young in the name of Obamacare. Indeed, the Republicans seem increasingly like those gassy, self-righteous, and hell-bound rhetoricians.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention. 2010s

War, Hell, Reading

“How did it happen that a republic born of a rebellion against a king and parliament we did not elect has fallen under a tyranny of judges we did not elect?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Republic of Technology (1978), p. 9.

World

“His early profession as a lawyer was abandoned to enter academic life. In this chosen field he attained the highest rank as an educator, and has left his impress upon the intellectual thought of the country. From the Presidency of Princeton University he was called by his fellow citizens to be the Chief Executive of the State of New Jersey. The duties of this high office he so conducted as to win the confidence of the people of the United States, who twice elected him to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic. As President of the United States he was moved by an earnest desire to promote the best interests of the country as he conceived them. His acts were prompted by high motives and his sincerity of purpose can not be questioned. He led the nation through the terrific struggle of the world war with a lofty idealism which never failed him. He gave utterance to the aspiration of humanity with an eloquence which held the attention of all the earth and made America a new and enlarged influence in the destiny of mankind.”

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

1920s, Proclamation Upon the Death of Woodrow Wilson (1924)

Life, War, People, World

“Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 36. Of the most Excellent Men
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Age, Universe, Parting

“When you run across dedicated Socialists, remember that the only difference between a Socialist and a Communist is in the method of takeover. The desire to seize monolithic control of society is the same in both. Sometimes people forget that USSR stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some people count Socialism "good" and Communism "bad."”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

In reality the two are twins.
The Naked Communist (1958)

People, Communication, Reality, Forgetting

“Such action (People's Republic of China establishing diplomatic relation with Panama) is not only a blatant threat to the Taiwanese people's right to survive but also a blatant provocation to cross-strait and regional peace and stability. We hereby express our serious condemnation.”

Joseph Wu (1954) Taiwanese politician

Source: Joseph Wu (2017) cited in " Taiwan denounces China for damaging cross-strait peace http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201706130007.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 13 June 2017.

People, Peace

“The Iraqi people consist of brotherly nationalities which have amalgamated in order to defend the existence of the eternal Iraqi Republic. [This is] why we always declare 'long live true Iraqi unity, for in it lies our strength.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

March, 1959, as quoted in Adeed Dawisha (2009), Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation.

People

“Reverend Jesse Jackson, President-for-Life of the People’s Republic of Himself.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

" The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/20/feb02/msteyn.htm", The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 6, February 2002

Life, People

“Our purpose is not — and shall never be-either the quest for power or the desire to punish. We seek to increase the power of the people over all their governments, not to enhance the power of the Federal Government over any of the people. For the life of this Republic, our people have zealously guarded their liberty against abuses of power by their governments. The one weapon they have used is the mightiest weapon in the arsenal of democracy — the vote. This has been enough, for as Woodrow Wilson said, "The instrument of all reform in America is the ballot."”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Life, People, Democracy

“Unfortunately, the opinion has gone forth that no politician dares to be the advocate of peace when the question of war is mooted. That will be an evil hour — the sand of our republic will be nearly run — when it shall be in the power of any demagogue, or fanatic, to raise a war-clamor, and control the legislation of the country. The evils of war must fall upon the people, and with them the war-feeling should originate. We, their representatives, are but a mirror to reflect the light, and never should become a torch to fire the pile.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech in Congress, 1846.
1840s

War, People, Peace, Feeling

“They could resign themselves to the Republic no less than the big industrialists, who did not favour the various abortive revolts and did not, for the most part, encourage National-Socialism.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Hitler: A Biography (1936), p. 58

Parting

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics won, but racing to the line for a strong second place came feisty little Finland.”

Väinö Linna book The Unknown Soldier

Vanhala, the eternal comedian, summarizing the war after it ends, p. 466.
The Unknown Soldier

Strong

“I. We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS. Most emphatically do we demand that such laws as have been recently enacted, which therefore may fairly be presumed to embody the present will and to be dictated by the present needs of the Republic, and which, after due consideration have received your personal sanction, shall by you be carried into full effect, and that you publicly and decisively instruct your subordinates that such laws exist, that they are binding on all functionaries and citizens, and that they are to be obeyed to the letter.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Law, Decision, Personality

“Beijing should face up to the existence of the Republic of China, as it is the best connection linking Taipei and Beijing.”

Hau Lung-pin (1952) Taiwanese politician

Hau Lung-pin (2016) cited in " Peace reliant on ‘consensus’: KMT’s Hau http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2016/10/12/2003656994" on Taipei Times, 12 October 2016

“For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of aftercoming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.”

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

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Life, Men, People, Justice

“The Bush Doctrine is a prescription for permanent war for permanent peace, though wars are the death of republics.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

Death, War, Peace

“Americans saw Watergate as a threat to their republic. They countered by following constitutional and legal procedure to the letter. In [South] Korea, many people appear unwilling to separate the political system from the wrongdoings of politicians.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Still the Unloved Republic (December 2016)

People, Appearance

“We are to have one flag, and on it the words: Holy and Pure Republic.”

Vasil Levski (1837–1873) Bulgarian revolutionary

Original: (bg) Ще имаме едно знаме, на което ще пише: „Свята и чиста република.
Source: "Svoboda" newspaper, February 13, 1871

“A man to whom despotism is the savior and liberty the destroyer of society, who, during the last twenty years, in every contest between liberty and oppression, uniformally and promptly took sides with the oppressor; who regarded every extension of the right of suffrage, even to white men in his own country, as shooting Niagara; who gloated over deeds of cruelty, and talked of applying to the backs of men the beneficent whip, to the great delight of many of the slaveholders of America in particular, could have but little sympathy with our emancipated and progressive Republic, or with the triumph of liberty any where. But the American people can easily stand the utterances of such a man. They however have a right to be impatient and indignant at those among ourselves who turn the most hopeful portents into omens of disaster, and make themselves the ministers of despair, when they should be those of hope, and help cheer on the country in the new grand career of justice upon which it has now so nobly and bravely entered.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, People, Justice, Hope

““But then—you’re telling me they brought unrestricted communications with them?” he asked.
“Yup.” Rachel looked up from her console. “We’ve been trying for years to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn’t listen. For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won’t take no for an answer because it doesn’t have an opinion on anything; it just is.”
“But information isn’t free. It can’t be. I mean, some things — if anyone could read anything they wanted, they might read things that would tend to deprave and corrupt them, wouldn’t they? People might give exactly the same consideration to blasphemous pornography that they pay to the Bible! They could plot against the state, or each other, without the police being able to listen in and stop them!”
Martin sighed. “You’re still hooked on the state thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Can you take it from me, there are other ways of organizing your civilization?”
“Well—” Vassily blinked at him in mild confusion. “Are you telling me you let information circulate freely where you come from?”
“It’s not a matter of permitting it,” Rachel pointed out. “We had to admit that we couldn’t prevent it. Trying to prevent it was worse than the disease itself.”
“But, but lunatics could brew up biological weapons in their kitchens, destroy cities! Anarchists would acquire the power to overthrow the state, and nobody would be able to tell who they were or where they belonged anymore. The most foul nonsense would be spread, and nobody could stop it—” Vassily paused. “You don’t believe me,” he said plaintively.
“Oh, we believe you alright,” Martin said grimly. “It’s just—look, change isn’t always bad. Sometimes freedom of speech provides a release valve for social tensions that would lead to revolution. And at other times, well—what you’re protesting about boils down to a dislike for anything that disturbs the status quo. You see your government as a security blanket, a warm fluffy cover that’ll protect everybody from anything bad all the time. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking in the New Republic; the idea that people who aren’t kept firmly in their place will automatically behave badly. But where I come from, most people have enough common sense to avoid things that’d harm them; and those that don’t, need to be taught. Censorship just drives problems underground.”
“But, terrorists!”
“Yes,” Rachel interrupted, “terrorists. There are always people who think they’re doing the right thing by inflicting misery on their enemies, kid. And you’re perfectly right about brewing up biological weapons and spreading rumors. But—” She shrugged. “We can live with a low background rate of that sort of thing more easily than we can live with total surveillance and total censorship of everyone, all the time.” She looked grim. “If you think a lunatic planting a nuclear weapon in a city is bad, you’ve never seen what happens when a planet pushed the idea of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship to the limit. There are places where—” She shuddered.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 14, “The Telephone Repairman” (pp. 296-297)

People, Disease, Way, Communication

“The advent of the new political economy marked a decisive moment in the demise of the republican strand of American politics and the rise of contemporary liberalism. According to this liberalism, government should be neutral as to conceptions of the good life, in order to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their own ends. Keynesian fiscal policy both reflected this liberalism and deepened its hold on American public life. Although those who practiced Keynesian economics did not defend it in precisely these terms, the new political economy displayed two features of the liberalism that defines the procedural republic.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

Life, Decision, Personality

“Every day I talk with the enemy. But I do not see an embodiment of "him who opposes goodness." If we approach the war on terrorism with the fervor of a Christian jihad against Islam, our battle is already lost, for we have become what we opposed and we are now the fundamentalists. Our battle is not one of flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers and principalities which rule this present darkness. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught up in "war mode" against a fleshly enemy, or the true enemy is already within us, and we have failed to believe in the power of a redemption which (we say) we believe has saved us. … My comfort and liberty must not be won by the sacrifices of a new and foreign poor now paying the price for our moral failings of diplomacy,. economy and statesmanship, turning our Republic into an Empire.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), pp. 71-72.

War

“To make the whole Korean peninsula nuclear-free was the behest of the great President Kim Il-sung, and it is the consistent stand of the government of our Republic. The nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula arose as a result of the United States constantly threatening the sovereignty and security of our people. Sovereignty is the lifeline of a country and nation. We have possessed nuclear deterrent to protect our sovereignty from the blatant nuclear threat of the United States and its increasingly hostile policy.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

Response to questions from Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency (13 October 2011) http://naenara.com.kp/en/news/news_view.php?22+1477

Hostility, People, Country

“The third reason is that at the time that Turkic Muslims were waging rebellion in the early years of the Guangxu reign, the ‘five elite divisions’ that governor general Liu Jintang led out of the Pass were all Dungan troops [Hui dui 回队]. Back then, Dungan military commanders such as Cui Wei and Hua Dacai were surrendered troops who had been redeployed. These are undoubtedly cases of pawns who went on to achieve great merit. When Cen Shuying was in charge of military affairs in Yunnan, the Muslim troops and generals that he used included many rebels, and it was because of them that the Muslim rebellion in Yunnan was pacified. These are examples to show that Muslim troops can be used effectively even while Muslim uprisings are still in progress. What is more, since the establishment of the Republic, Dungan have demonstrated not the slightest hint of errant behaviour to suggest that they may prove to be unreliable.”

Yang Zengxin

From Yunnan to Xinjiang:Governor Yang Zengxin and his Dungan Generals, by Anthony Garnaut ( PDF http://www.ouigour.fr/recherches_et_analyses/Garnautpage_93.pdf).

Time

“For peace and brotherhood at the axis of a democratic republic, I am ready to serve the Turkish State, and I believe that for this end I must remain alive.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

As quoted in Turkish Press Review (1 June 1999) http://www.byegm.gov.tr/YAYINLARIMIZ/CHR/ING99/06/99X06X01.HTM#%200.

Peace

“We should take counsel of both nature and art in the consideration of this question. When the architect intends a grand structure, he makes the foundation broad and strong. We should imitate this prudence in laying the foundations of the future Republic. There is a law of harmony in all departments of nature. The oak is in the acorn. The career and destiny of individual men are enfolded in the elements of which they are composed. The same is true of a nation. It will be something or it will be nothing. It will be great, or it will be small, according to its own essential qualities. As these are rich and varied, or pure and simple, slender and feeble, broad and strong, so will be the life and destiny of the nation itself. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. The ship cannot sail faster than the wind. The flight of the arrow depends upon the strength and elasticity of the bow, and as with these, so with a nation.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Life, Men, Law, Art

“The Predatory State is an economic system where entire sectors have been built up to feast upon public systems built originally for public purposes and largely serving the middle class. The corporate republic simply administers the spoils system. On a day-to-day basis, the business of its leadership is to deliver favors to their clients. These range from coal companies to sweatshop operators to military contractors.”

James K. Galbraith (1952) economist

Source: The Predatory State, 2008, p. 146-7

Business

“Four decades after the mullahs created the Khomeinist republic their revolution has not produced a single poet worth the name. Khomeini and Khamenei, both amateur poets, have produced nothing but frankly embarrassing imitations of classical ghazal without its charm. The last remaining great poets of the pre-revolution era are all in exile, among them Hushang Ebtehaj, Manuchehr Yektai, Yadollah Roya’i, Esmail Khoi, Muhammad Jalali, and Hadi Khorsandi. Inside Iran, some promising younger poets such as Sa’id Sultanpour, Heydar Mehregan, and, more recently, Hashem Shaabani were executed by the regime but gained posthumous popularity greater than any officially endorsed poet. At the same time, almost all of Iran’s poets, from the 9th century to this day, are either censored or, in rare cases, totally banned by the mullahs. Most poets of the past 100 years are on various blacklists established by the oxymoronically named Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture. And, yet, Khamenei calls on the government to prepare a plan, and allocate resources, to increase the production of poetry as if it were the same as centrifuges churning out enriched uranium.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

Time, Past

“The immigrant who comes to us from a life of oppression must be made to realize that he assumes an obligation; otherwise, he is not wanted. Either he must live with us in the light of the highest citizenship, or else society will impose upon him the very restrictions he has sought to escape by coming here. It is the wolf in sheep's clothing who has cast a slur on immigration. There are many who land here who really never get to America. They become Americanized in everything but in heart. To teach the foreigner English is a necessary step; but it is not an end in itself; it is merely one of the implements of Americanization. This may hold diners peoples together for a while, just as economic opportunity and financial reward may cover their isolation. But unless, in their living—rather than in then livelihood—they daily exercise the principles on which the Republic rests, we have among us a shell of citizenship liable to explode at the least upsetting of economic balance, rather than the vital spirit which is at the basis of American life.”

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

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Life, People, Exercises, Light

“In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade….”

Ronald Syme book The Roman Revolution

The Roman Revolution ([1939] 2002), Introduction.

Age, Democracy

“This new party was made up of Northern men from the ruins of the old Whig party, the Free-Soil Democracy and all friends of true republican liberty who desired to see the Sham Democracy overthrown, and the National Government brought back to the principles of Washington and Jefferson and the fathers of the Republic.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

Men, Democracy

“Of course, there is no such thing as collective guilt, but I want to apologise as head of state of the Republic of Austria for those crimes committed by Austrians under the banner of National Socialism.”

Kurt Waldheim (1918–2007) 4th Secretary-General of the United Nations, President of Austria

Selbstverständlich gibt es keine Kollektivschuld, trotzdem möchte ich mich als Staatsoberhaupt der Republik Österreich für jene Verbrechen entschuldigen, die von Österreichern im Zeichen des Nationalsozialismus begangen wurden. Rede des Bundespräsidenten Dr. Kurt Waldheim am Vorabend des 50. Jahrestages des „Anschlusses“ Österreichs an Hitlerdeutschland im Österreichischen Fernsehen http://www.uibk.ac.at/zeitgeschichte/zis/library/gehler.html#dok3 Often quoted as simply "There is no such thing as collective guilt".

“The government of the republic will fulfill its duty to defend its independence, to repel foreign aggression, and accept the struggle to which it has been provoked, counting on the unanimous spirit of the Mexicans and on the fact that sooner or later the cause of rights and justice will triumph.”

Benito Juárez (1806–1872) President of Mexico during XIX century

Proclamation to the Mexican people, shortly before the Battle of Puebla of 5 May 1862 (which is commemorated by the "Cinco de Mayo" celebrations).

Justice

“A great system of internal improvement is being inaugurated in our midst, which fostered and encouraged, as it should be, will make Oregon, in the not distant future, one of the finest and most prosperous States in the Republic.”

George Lemuel Woods (1832–1890) American politician

George Lemuel Woods (September 1870) Governor George L. Woods - Governor's Message, 1870 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777834. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Message of Gov. George L. Woods to the Legislative Assembly, Fifth Regular Session, September 1870, Salem, Oregon, W.A. McPherson, State Printer, 1870.

Distant, Future

“The other philosophy of government is based on creation, which says laws come from the Creator, rights are unalienable, and government should be limited. That's called a republic.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Law

“We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism; but we have no right to forget that wage-slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

§ 1.4, "The Withering Away of the State and Violent Revolution", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

People, Forgetting

“There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay book Critical and Historical Essays

"Essay on Ludwig von Ranke's 'History of the Popes', in "Critical and Historical Essays", iii, (London; Longman, 7th Edn. 1952), 100-1.
Attributed

Life, Hostility, Children, Lie

“The great paradox of Australian history is that what started out as a colony populated by people whom Britain had thrown out proved to be so loyal to the British Empire for so long. America had begun as a combination of tobacco plantation and Puritan utopia, a creation of economic and religious liberty, and ended up as a rebel republic. Australia started out as a jail, the very negation of liberty. Yet the more reliable colonists turned out to be not the Pilgrims but the prisoners.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

People, History

“For centuries, Ottoman sultans dreamed of conquest in the name of Islam. When they failed on the battlefield they sought glory in building mosques. Eighty years after the Caliphate was abolished to make way for a Western-style republic, the tradition is being revived by Turkey’s current leaders. Led by the ebullient Recep Tayyip Erdogan and inspired by an ideological hodgepodge labeled “neo-Ottomanism,” they are using urban architecture to kill the European dream of secular Turks. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the republic, adopted the Latin alphabet, purged Turkish of Arabic words and brought mosques and religious endowments under state control. He also enlisted a team of French ethnologists to invent the myth of a Turkish nation related to Hungarians and Finns and stretching from Central Europe to Central Asia. For decades, Turkey’s Islamists tried to undo as much of Ataturk’s “reforms” as possible but failed because a majority of Turks would not vote for a party with an Islamist agenda. Erdogan solved that problem by uniting some 20 different Islamist groups into a new party that made no mention of Islam.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Farewell Ataturk" http://nypost.com/2013/06/27/farewell-ataturk/, New York Post (June 27, 2013). New York Post

Dreams, Way, Problem

“Gentlemen, ideas outlive men; ideas outlive all earthly things. You who fought in the war for the Union fought for immortal ideas, and by their might you crowned the war with victory. [Great applause. ] But victory was worth nothing except for the truths that were under it, in it, and above it. We meet tonight as comrades to stand guard around the sacred truths for which we fought. [Loud and prolonged cheers. ] And while we have life to meet and grasp the hand of a comrade, we will stand by the great truths of the war. ["Good," "good," and loud cheers. ] Many convictions have sunk so deep into our hearts that we can never forget them. Think of the elevating spirit of the war itself. We gathered the boys from all our farms and shops and stores and schools and homes, from all over the Republic. They went forth unknown to fame, but returned enrolled on the roster of immortal heroes. [Great applause. ] They went in the spirit of the soldiers of Henry at Agincourt, of whom he said. 'For he today that sheds his blood with me. Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile. This day shall gentle his condition.'”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

Life, Men, War, Truth

“Latin America. While we are desirous of promoting peace in every quarter of the globe, we have a special interest in the peace of this hemisphere. It is our constant desire that all causes of dispute in this area may be tranquilly and satisfactorily adjusted. Along with our desire for peace is the earnest hope for the increased prosperity of our sister republics of Latin America, and our constant purpose to promote cooperation with them which may be mutually beneficial and always inspired by the most cordial friendships.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Friendship, Peace, Hope, Sister

“I am not saying Barack Obama is a fascist. I am not saying the Democrats are a fascist. I am saying the government, under Bush and under Obama and under all of the presidents we've seen, or at least most of the presidents that we've seen for quite some time, are slowly but surely moving us away from our republic and into a system of fascism.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2000s, 2009

Time

“The end of the republic is to enervate and to weaken all other bodies so as to increase its own body.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 2, Ch. 3 (translation by Mansfield and Tarcov)
Discourses on Livy (1517)

“So, what's next? Will this debate subside or continue, as people look to other uses of Confederate icons and symbols? Is this simply about a flag that is as much a symbol of resistance to civil rights and equality as it was a symbol for soldiers whose performance on the battlefield might have secured the independence of a republic founded upon the cornerstone of white supremacy and inequality? One thing is clear: it has not been a good ten days for Confederate heritage advocates. Between licence plates, several SCV divisions rebuking other Confederate heritage groups for outrageous and childish behavior, and the fallout from Charleston, it may be that in 2015 people marked the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War by doing to Confederate heritage what Grant and Sherman did to the Confederacy itself in 1865.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, Down It Comes: No What? (June 2015)

War, People, Behavior

“Anyone who embraces the Republic of China with all of their heart definitely does not support the Taiwan independence movement.”

Ma Ying-jeou (1950) Taiwanese politician, president of the Republic of China

Ma Ying-jeou (2016) cited in: " President urges mainland China not to misjudge flag controversy http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201601160006.aspx" in Focus Taiwan, 16 January 2016. Statement made in responding to Mainland China about the ROC flag controversy showed by a Taiwanese member of South Korean girl group Twice, 16 January 2016. Political issues

Support, Heart

“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”

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

Introduction to 1891 edition of Karl Marx's, The Civil War in France

People, Thinking, Reality

“The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens; but it is equally true that a good revenue system is the life of an organized government. I meet you at a time when the nation has voluntarily burdened itself with a debt unprecedented in our annals. Vast as is its amount, it fades away into nothing when compared with the countless blessings that will be conferred upon our country and upon man by the preservation of the nation's life. Now, on the first occasion of the meeting of Congress since the return of peace, it is of the utmost importance to inaugurate a just policy, which shall at once be put in motion, and which shall commend itself to those who come after us for its continuance. We must aim at nothing less than the complete effacement of the financial evils that necessarily followed a state of civil war.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Quote, First State of the Union Address (1865)

Life, War, Peace, Intelligence

“The Spanish Republic did not find itself free of obligations. For the most part the leaders were Freemasons. Before their duty to their country came their obligations to the Grand Orient. In my opinion, Freemasonry, with all its international influence, is the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain, as well as the murder of Calvo Sotelo, who was executed in accordance with orders from the Grand Secretary of Freemasonry in Geneva.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Interview with Spanish journalist Nena Belmonte, as quoted in "Freemasonry and the Spanish Civil War" https://web.archive.org/web/20080513182157/http://www.freemasonrytoday.com/30/p09.php by Matthew Scanlan.

Parting, Country

“A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter VII: "Excursion to St. Fe, etc.", entry for 18-19 October 1833, page 165 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=F11&pageseq=184

Men, Justice

“The existence of this new Republic was inaugurated by striking the fetters from the slaves in Porto Rico. This beneficent measure was followed by the release of several thousand persons illegally held as slaves in Cuba. Next, the Captain-General of that colony was deprived of the power to set aside the orders of his superiors at Madrid, which had pertained to the office since 1825. The sequestered estates of American citizens, which had been the cause of long and fruitless correspondence, were ordered to be restored to their owners. All these liberal steps were taken in the face of a violent opposition directed by the reactionary slave-holders of Havana, who are vainly striving to stay the march of ideas which has terminated slavery in Christendom, Cuba only excepted. Unhappily, however, this baneful influence has thus far succeeded in defeating the efforts of all liberal-minded men in Spain to abolish slavery in Cuba, and in preventing the promised reform in that island. The struggle for political supremacy continues there.”

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

1870s, Fifth State of the Union Address (1873)

Men, Idea, Effort, Personality

Quotes about republic page 5

Quotes about republic
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