Commonwealth Quotes - Page 3

• Today is indeed an historic occasion when as a first chair-in-office woman I hand over to another woman chair in office, your Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in the presence of a woman head of the Commonwealth, Her Royal Highness, Her Majesty the Queen of England.

  Kamla Persad-Bissessar

  Queens, Hands, Office

  "Queen urges Cwealth leaders to be bold". "PM" with Mark Colvin, www.abc.net.au. October 28, 2011.

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• The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  True Friend, Men, Political

  Theodore Roosevelt (2004). “Letters and Speeches”

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• We meet With few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Stupid, Two, Support

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• I am firmly convinced, therefore, that to set up a republic which is to last a long time, the way to set about it is to constitute it as Sparta and Venice were constituted; to place it in a strong position, and so to fortify it that no one will dream of taking it by a sudden assault; and, on the other hand, not to make it so large as to appear formidable to its neighbors. It should in this way be able to enjoy its form of government for a long time. For war is made on a commonwealth for two reasons: to subjugate it, and for fear of being subjugated by it.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Dream, Art, Strong

  "Discourses on Livy" by Niccolò Machiavelli, book 1, ch. 3, as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick, 1517.

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• Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth.

  Plutarch

  Wisdom, Ambition, Mean

  Plutarch, John Dryden, Arthur Hugh Clough (2005). “Greek and Roman Lives”, p.376, Courier Corporation

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• Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Community, Leader, Kingdoms

  "The iPod and the Queen, the Kindle and the King" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 11, 2009.

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• ..(T)here are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wise, Believe, Men

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• Obviously any export of uranium to India could only occur within an appropriate international framework to be negotiated by the commonwealth government.

  Jay Weatherill

  Government, India, Framework

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• Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great commonwealth, for all Australians - those who are indigenous and those who are not - to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.

  Kevin Rudd

  Country, Together, Citizens

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• A disunited people till the end of time, suspicious and distrustful of each other, [the Americans] will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths... with no center of union and no common interest.

  Josiah Tucker

  People, Revolution, Till The End

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• The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.

  Wendell Berry

  Mean, Community, Political

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.58, Counterpoint

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• In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Dark, Determined, Socialism

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Economic Calculation In the Socialist Commonwealth”, p.22, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Political, May

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil”, p.259, Simon and Schuster

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• Members in the Commonwealth of God are not bound together by the specifics of their religion, for the nature of our interdependency does not require this. Rather we are bound by the shared recognition that when one person suffers, all suffer; when we violate one life, all lives are violated; when we pollute the earth, all living things are stained; when one nation threatens the security of another, it, too, becomes less secure; when we place the planet in mortal danger, we hazard the future of our own children as well as the children of our enemies.

  Forrest Church

  Children, Enemy, Suffering

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• As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may wore properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.

  Laurence Sterne

  Leaving, Genius, Letters

  Laurence Sterne (1783). “The Works of Laurence Sterne”, p.101

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• I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within the commonwealth; in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.

  Dorothea Dix

  Insane Person, Gentleman, Cages

  Dorothea Lynde Dix (1843). “Memorial: To the Legislature of Massachusetts [protesting Against the Confinement of Insane Persons and Idiots in Almshouses and Prisons]”, p.4

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• We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammelled action so far as is consistent with the common good and the interest of others. Rulers should, nevertheless, anxiously safeguard the community and all its members; the community, because the conservation thereof is so emphatically the business of the supreme power, that the safety of the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a government's whole reason of existence.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Government, Law, Safety

  Pope Leo XIII (1990). “A Light in the Heavens: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII”, p.157, TAN Books

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• The caterpillars of the commonwealth,
  Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

  William Shakespeare

  Weed, Politics, Pluck

  William Shakespeare, Roma Gill (1998). “Richard II”, p.45, Oxford University Press, USA

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• And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.

  Galileo Galilei

  Math, People, Judging

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• To resume, in a few words, the system of the Imperial government, as it was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those princes who understood their own interest and that of the people, it may be defined an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth. The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed.

  Edward Gibbon

  Government, People, History

  Edward Gibbon (2016). “THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages”, p.108, e-artnow

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• It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and ennobled by the effort.

  Charlie Pierce

  Struggle, Effort, Weakness

  "I Dream of Common Wealth" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. March 29, 2012.

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• Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.

  Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

  Degrees, Apathy, Next

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• It is contrary to the principles of reason and justice that any should be compelled to contribute to the maintenance of a church with which their consciences will not permit them to join, and from which they can derive no benefit; for remedy whereof, and that equal liberty as well religious as civil, may be universally extended to all the good people of this commonwealth.

  George Mason

  Religious, Father, Justice

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• This is my last Commonwealth Games. Five CWG and nine medals, it is enough for me.

  Abhinav Bindra

  Commonwealth Games, Nine, Lasts

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• One of the jewels in the crown of Labour's time in office was the rescue of the National Health Service. As the Commonwealth Fund, the London School of Economics and the Nuffield Foundation have all shown, health reforms as well as additional investment were essential to improved outcomes, especially for poorer patients.

  David Miliband

  School, Jewels, Office

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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