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The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of and protection and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to their own safety.

Algernon Sidney

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Algernon Sidney
Age: 60 †
Born: 1623
Born: January 15
Died: 1683
Died: December 7
Diplomat
English Politician
Politician
Writer
Algernon Sydney
Hon. Algernon Sidney
Right
Taking
Obtaining
Giving
Ways
Rendered
Way
Order
Governments
People
Cannot
Obedience
Ends
Provide
Give
Protection
Government
Safety
Best
Please
Constituted

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Who will wear a shoe that hurts him, because the shoe-maker tells him 'tis well made?
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For violence or fraud can create no right.
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Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.
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I will believe in the right of one man to govern a nation despotically when I find a man born unto the world with boots and spurs, and a nation with saddles on their backs.
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[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.
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Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.
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Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty.
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[L]iberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted . . .
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If his Majesty is resolved to have my head, he may make a whistle of my arse if he pleases.
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That which is not just, is not Law and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.
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[A]ll popular and well-mixed governments [republics] . . . are ever established by wise and good men, and can never be upheld otherwise than by virtue: The worst men always conspiring against them, they must fall, if the best have not power to preserve them. . . . [and] unless they be preserved in a great measure free from vices . . . .
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Liars need to have good memories.
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Men lived like fishes the great ones devoured the small.
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There may be a hundred thousand men in an army, who are all equally free but they only are naturally most fit to be commanders or leaders, who most excel in the virtues required for the right performance of those offices.
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If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished . . .
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Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by publick authority cannot be taken.
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Swords were given to men, that none might be Slaves, but such as know not how to use them.
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It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun
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Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of passions and affections... nothing can or ought to be permanent but that which is perfect.
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That is the best Government, which best provides for war.
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