Social Compact Quotes

General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, and other military chieftains, have by force of arms, overthrown the federal institutions of Mexico, and dissolved the social compact which existed between Texas and the other members of the Mexican Confederacy

A body politic is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

The laws only can determine the punishment of crimes, and the authority of making penal laws can only reside with the legislator, who represents the whole society united by the social compact.

The body-politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: It is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good. It is the duty of the people, therefore, in framing a Constitution of Government, to provide for an equitable mode of making laws, as well as for an impartial interpretation, and a faithful execution of them; that every man may, at all times, find his security in them.

It is sometimes a very grave question when and how far one nation has a right to assist the subjects of another, who have revolted, and implored that assistance. It is said (a) that assistance may be afforded, consistently with the law of nations, in extreme cases, as when rulers have violated the principles of the social compact, and given just cause to their subjects to consider themselves discharged from their allegiance

The bringing-about of order is the first and fundamental task of government. We accept limits on our rights for the sake of a larger social compact all the time.

It is federal, because it is the government of States united in a political union, in contradistinction to a government of individuals, that is, by what is usually called, a social compact. To express it more concisely, it is federal and not national because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State or Nation.

Public policy in the twentieth century was about protecting and expanding the social compact, based on recognition that effective government at the federal level provides rules and services and safety measures that contribute to a better society.

A contract for the establishment of government, being nothing but a voluntary contract between individuals for their mutual benefit, differs, in nothing that is essential to its validity, from any other contract between man and man, or between nation and nation.

[America should be a] nation, coextensive with the North American continent, destined by God and nature to be the most populous and powerful people ever combined under one social compact.

Since men are social by nature they are meant to live with others and to work for one another's welfare

While most trudge through their days straight-jacketed in the social compact, living for others as much as or more than for themselves, a select few excel.

… the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter; for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent?

I consent to this constitution because I can expect no better.

However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.

Bills of attainder, ex-post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.

The social compact sets up among the citizens as equality of such kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights.

What is needed is both a New Deal in terms of mission-oriented investments but also a new deal in terms of a modern social compact - one that allows the state to socialize not only risks but also rewards. Maybe then innovation-led growth will also become growth that includes all of us.

Americans, by means of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution, entered into a social contract which the successive generations assent to yet change its meanings with the changing contexts of different times.

... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Is it not that in the chain of human events, the birthday of a nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?

The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.

Obama promised a return to competence and confidence and asked the nation to believe again that the government could do big things well. In the end, he got his big thing, a once-in-a-generation revision to the basic social compact, a commitment of health coverage to nearly all Americans. He has yet to prove he can do it well.