Bernard Bailyn - Power Quotes

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What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right.

Bernard Bailyn

The primary function of a constitution was to mark out the boundaries of governmental powers-hence in England, where there was no constitution, there were no limits (save for the effect of trail by jury) to what the legislature might do.

Bernard Bailyn

The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power.

Bernard Bailyn

The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.

Bernard Bailyn

Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should.

Bernard Bailyn