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"I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government."
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"Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle."
"Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom."
"I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."
"I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government."
"I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world."
"The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments."
"Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure."
"It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for."
"We are a forward-looking people, and we must have a forward-looking government."
"The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion."
Explore more quotes by Gerrit Smith
"It is not to be disguised, that a war has broken out between the North and the South. - Political and commercial men are industriously striving to restore peace: but the peace, which they would effect, is superficial, false, and temporary."
"There is one class of men, whom it especially behoves to be tenacious of the right of free discussion. I mean the poor."
"I trust, that your readers will not construe my words to mean, that I would not have gone to a 3 o'clock in the morning session, for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill."
"God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men."
"Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion."
"Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man."
"It is manifestly vital to the success of the anti-slavery cause, that the authority and influence of proslavery, especially of slaveholding, ministers should be destroyed."
"It, sometimes, suits the slaveholders to claim, that their slavery is an exclusively State concern; and that the North has, therefore, nothing to do with it."
"But as well may you, when urging a man up-hill with a heavy load upon his back, and with your lash also upon his back, tell him, that be has nothing to do either with the load or the lash."
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