Balanced Power Quotes

An elective despotism [i.e. of the Congress] was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

The president can't succeed without Congress, and Congress can't succeed without the president. The image of one depends on the image of another. It is not a zero-sum game.

What we need is a government with authority but without authoritarianism.

There be three sorts of government--monarchical, aristocratical, democratical; and they are apt to fall three several ways into ruin--the first, by tyranny; the second, by ambition; the last, by tumults. A commonwealth grounded upon any one of these is not of long continuance; but, wisely mingled, each guards the other and makes that government exact.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society.

Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.

For peace is not simply the absence of warfare, based on a precarious balance of power; it is fashioned by efforts directed day after day toward the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God, with a more perfect form of justice among men.

Only peace between equals can last.

A just society will appear less spectacular, and less clearly defined, than a society with totalitarian leadership, theocratic goals.