“In a Republic education is indispensable. A Republic without education is like the creature of imagination, a human being without a soul, living and moving blindly, with no just sense of the present or the future.”—Charles Sumner.
“Without popular education, no government which rests upon popular action can long endure. The people must be schooled in the knowledge, and if possible in the virtues, upon which the maintenance and success of free institutions depend.”—Woodrow Wilson.
“Government—Liberty—Authority—Law—the man or the woman who fails to appreciate the true meaning of these terms, lacks the training necessary to be a good citizen in a Republic.”—Abraham Lincoln.
“We need more of the office desk and less of the show-window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the lime-light.”—Calvin Coolidge.
“Government is the aggregate of authorities which rule a society.”
“Government is that institution or aggregate of institutions by which society makes and carries out those rules of action which are necessary to enable men to live in a social state, or which are imposed upon the people forming that society by those who possess the power or authority of prescribing them.”—Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Vol. I, p. 891.
Government is the organized means and power that a State or Nation employs for the purpose of securing the rights of the people, and of perpetuating its own existence.
The real aim and purpose is well stated in the preamble to our Constitution when it says: “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”.
Government can never rise higher than the ideals of the people who compose the government. Good governments are the products of good people. Good governments can only exist where the people are intelligent and upright in character, and where each citizen is willing to guard the rights and privileges of others as well as those of himself.
“This government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”—Abraham Lincoln.