A Quote by Thomas Jefferson

If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.

Thomas Jefferson

Quote Topics

Constitution Degenerate Either Elective Fact First Fixed His In Fact Inheritance Life Magistrate Office Period Practice Services Some Soon Though Will

Quote Author

Thomas Jefferson
American - President
April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

John Adams

I will not step down, I will not resign, ... I will work to the end of my term in office under the constitution. In the year 2000, there will be presidential elections under the constitution and I will not run in those elections.

Boris Yeltsin

If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.

John Adams

The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people.

Thomas Jefferson

Soon the Oval Office will be his [ Donald Trump] office, his home.

George Stephanopoulos

This idea that once you get into politics... you are now signed up for lifelong duty being in elective office, makes a fundamental error - and that is believing that the only way you can hold progressive views and implement them is in elective office.

Matt Gonzalez

This idea that once you get into politics you are now signed up for lifelong duty being in elective office, makes a fundamental error - and that is believing that the only way you can hold progressive views and implement them is in elective office.

Matt Gonzalez

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Hubert H. Humphrey

Our rate of progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, will be called on to face novel situations which find no parallel in his past. The fixed person, for the fixed duties, who, in older societies was such a godsend, in the future will be a public danger.

Alfred North Whitehead

Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon, this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves repeatedly.

Yuval Noah Harari

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.

Augusten Burroughs

I felt that no boy should have to depend either for his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside. And I think it was out of this experience, not at the moment consciously, but through the years, I came to believe that health services ought not to have a price tag on them, and that people should be able to get whatever health services they require irrespective of their individual capacity to pay.

Tommy Douglas

Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.

James Bovard

If a person is cold and rigid, he feels within himself as if he were in a grave. He is not living, he cannot enjoy this life for he cannot express himself and he cannot see the light and life outside. What keeps man from developing the heart quality? His exacting attitude. He wants to make a business of love. He says, 'If you will love me, I will love you.' As soon as a man measures and weighs his favors and his services and all that he does for one whom he loves, he ceases to know what love is. Love sees the beloved and nothing else.