A Quote by Ezra Stiles

All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.

Ezra Stiles

Quote Topics

America Been Civil Except Forms Mankind Polity Providence Realized Reserved Seems Tried

Quote Author

Ezra Stiles
American - Priest
December 10, 1727 - May 12, 1795

All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America. Most of the states, of all ages ...have been founded in rapacity, usurpation, and injustice; so that in the contests recorded in history ...the military history of all nations being but a description of the wars and invasions of the mutual robbers and devastators of the human race.

Ezra Stiles

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been

Winston Churchill

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Winston Churchill

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

Jonathan Swift

The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.

James McGreevey

The American Civil War produced carnage that has often been thought reserved for the combination of technological proficiency and inhumanity characteristic of a later time.

Drew Gilpin Faust

I am the last man in the world to say that the succor which is given us from America is not in itself something to rejoice at greatly. But I also say that I can see more in the knowledge that America is going to win a right to be at the conference table when the terms of peace are discussed. . . . It would have been a tragedy for mankind if America had not been there, and there with all her influence and power.

David Lloyd George

As we began to read more and more journals of men who had been in the Civil War and then been in the Indian Wars, we realized there was a whole universe of men whose souls had been shattered, whose lives had been utterly destroyed by what they had to do.

Edward Zwick

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

Alexander Hamilton

The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

So natural to mankind is intolerance ... that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized.

John Stuart Mill

I've been to Japan, I've been to China, I've been to Africa, I've been to the Middle East, I've been to Europe a little bit. I've never been to South America.

Colin Quinn

Don't get me wrong: there have been many occasions where I wished I could be thinner or have a different nose or hairline to fit in, but I realized that fitting in is not always as important as it seems; I realized that I love standing out in positive ways!

Nia Jax

... it seems to have been my luck to stumble into various forms of progress, to which I have been of the smallest possible use; yet for whose sake I have suffered the discomfort attending all action in moral improvements, without the happiness of knowing that this was clearly quite worth while.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

I would have done the same thing I did. I would have put all my energy into loving someone that wasn't you. I would have tried in vain, every day, to not think about you, and what could have been. What should have been. I would have tried to convince myself that there's no such thing as true love, except for the love you yourself make work, even though I know better....The bottom line is I never had any business marrying anyone who wasn't you.