I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, so I ask you to confirm me with your prayers.
Gerald R. FordRead
Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of laws over individual authority in governing a nation.
Gerald R. Ford's quote highlights the foundational principle of democratic governance, where laws are created and upheld by the people's consent, rather than the arbitrary power of individuals. This assertion reflects the value of a lawful society in which every citizen is subject to the same rules, ensuring fairness and justice, and underscores the idea that the authority of government is derived from the will of the people.
In practice
During a discussion on the importance of the legal system in democratic societies.
I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, so I ask you to confirm me with your prayers.
For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.
History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.
I believe that democracies do not go to war; that's the lesson of history, and I think that a democratic Pakistan is the world community's best guarantee of stability in Asia.
Politics is so personal, vicious and immediate, how are you going to get anything done? Even the local politics where I live have gotten so ugly.
Here in Minnesota, we don't only welcome immigrants; we send them to Washington.
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.
It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.
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