25 Quotes by Ezra Stiles

A monarchy conducted with infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence is the most perfect of all possible governments.

The right of conscience and private judgment is unalienable, and it is truly the interest of all mankind to unite themselves into one body for the liberty, free exercise, and unmolested enjoyment of this right.

We stand a better chance with aristocracy, whether hereditary or elective, than with monarchy.

The greater part of the governments on earth may be termed monarchical aristocracies, or hereditary dominions independent of the people.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island have originally realized the most perfect polity as to a legislature.

The British merchants represented that they received some profit indeed from Virginia and South Carolina, as well as the West Indies; but as for the rest of this continent, they were constant losers in trade.

In justice to human society it may perhaps be said of almost all the polities and civil institutions in the world, however imperfect, that they have been founded in and carried on with very considerable wisdom.

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.

Let the grand errand into America never be forgotten.