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The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws.
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“The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws.”

Thomas Paine

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Source
Rights of Man
Date
1791–1792
Meaning

Meaning of “The government of a free country, properly speaking,…”

The principle shifts legitimacy from rulers as personalities to laws and institutions that bind public authority.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Rights of Man, Part II; historical political argument about representative government and the rule of law.

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Ideas connected with this quotation

FreedomLeadershipResponsibilityShortThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentDemocracyJusticePoliticsPower
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Let us have faith that right makes might.
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“Let us have faith that right makes might.”

Abraham Lincoln · Cooper Union Address · 1860
Meaning & context

Lincoln reverses the idea that power establishes right, arguing that moral judgment should guide sustained political action rather than treating strength or intimidation as proof of justice.

Source details

Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860, closing passage. Lincoln is defending Republican opposition to the extension of slavery into federal territories; the line retains that antislavery political context.

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Law is reason without desire.
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“Law is reason without desire.”

Aristotle · Politics: A Treatise on Government · 4th century BCE
Meaning & context

Good law is idealized as judgment governed by reason rather than by the changing appetites or personal passions of an individual ruler.

Source details

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book III, Chapter XVI, William Ellis translation; represented through the 1912 Dent witness / Project Gutenberg #6762. In comparing rule by a person with rule by law, Aristotle says that passion can affect even the best rulers and concludes that law is reason without desire.

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Society in equality is its normal state.
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“Society in equality is its normal state.”

John Stuart Mill · The Subjection of Women · 1869
Meaning & context

Mill contrasts relations organized around command and obedience with equal association, presenting equality as the normal direction of an improving society.

Source details

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter II, printed page 79, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill contrasts command-and-obedience relations with equal association and states that society in equality is the normal state toward which improving social relations should move.

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The object of government is the welfare of the people.
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“The object of government is the welfare of the people.”

Theodore Roosevelt · The New Nationalism · 1910
Meaning & context

Roosevelt evaluates public power by whether it serves the welfare of people rather than becoming an instrument for entrenched private advantage or special interests.

Source details

The New Nationalism, Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910. This is Progressive Era political argument about public welfare, economic power and government responsibility, not current policy guidance.

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I contend for the rights of men and the liberty of reason.
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“I contend for the rights of men and the liberty of reason.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Men · 1790
Meaning & context

The line joins political rights with intellectual liberty: the argument is not merely for a different ruler but for people’s capacity to reason without inherited deference.

Source details

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke; Wollstonecraft frames the pamphlet as a defense of human rights and the liberty of reason.

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