A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends.
James MonroeRead
Peace is the best time for improvement and preparation of every kind; it is in peace that our commerce flourishes most, that taxes are most easily paid, and that the revenue is most productive.
Interpretation
Peace creates an environment where progress and prosperity can thrive.
In this quote, James Monroe emphasizes the importance of peace as a foundation for development and success. He suggests that during times of peace, societal activities such as commerce and tax payment are more effective, leading to greater revenue and overall improvement in various facets of life.
In practice
You can use this quote during a seminar on economic development to highlight the importance of stable environments.
A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends.
Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.
[In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places.
How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.
It was by one Union that we achieved our independence and liberties, and by it alone can they be maintained.
I enter on the trust to which I have been called by the suffrages of my fellow-citizens with my fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor.
Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31
I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.
Peace is not just safety or lack of war, violence, conflict and contention. Peace comes from knowing that the Savior knows who we are, knows that we have faith in Him, love Him, and keep His commandments, even and especially amid life's devastating trials and tragedies.
My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel's neighbours.
There will be no future without forgiveness. Any process of peace is bound to collapse if this is missing. There is no way peace and stability can come through the gun of vengeance.
If thou canst but thither, There grows the flower of Peace, The Rose that cannot wither, Thy fortress and thy ease.
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