semper reformanda

"Then it is right and proper for you to support the imperial dignity of Athens. This is something in which you all take pride, and you cannot continue to enjoy the privileges unless you also shoulder the burdens of empire. And do not imagine that we are fighting solely the question of freedom or slavery: there is also involved the loss of our empire and the dangers arising from the hatred you have incurred in administering it. Nor is it any longer possible for you to give up this empire, though there may be some people who in a mood of sudden panic and in a spirit of political apathy actually think that this would be a fine and noble thing to do. Your empire is like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go. And the kind of people who talk of doing so and pursuade others to adopt their point of view would very soon bring a state to ruin, and would do so even if they lived by themselves in isolation."
- Pericles in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2, paragraph 63.

"Wherever the standard of freedom and independance has been or shall be unfurled, there [America's] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the coors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit." - John Q. Adams, July 4, 1821.