GOVERNMENT QUOTES II
quotations about government
You can rule with a firm hand, or you can rule through consensus. Those with neither the strength for firmness nor the courage for consensus take refuge in the belief that they can remain somewhere in between. But that is an illusion.
IVAN KLIMA
Waiting for the Dark
When you ask the government for freedom, the stupidity of your petition is instant proof to the latter that you have no grasp of your rights.
ANSELME BELLEGARRIGUE
Anarchist Manifesto
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.
GEORGE ORWELL
Nineteen Eighty-Four
There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: "for reasons of state."
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Rousseau's Theory of the State
Let me govern myself, and I cannot fail in my instinct which is to seek my good.
ANSELME BELLEGARRIGUE
Au fait! Au fait! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique
Mix and knead together all the state business as you do for your sausages. To win the people, always cook them some savory that pleases them.
ARISTOPHANES
The Knights
It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men's hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction; and when it can handle things, in such manner, as no evil shall appear so peremptory, but that it hath some outlet of hope; which is the less hard to do, because both particular persons and factions, are apt enough to flatter themselves, or at least to brave that, which they believe not.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Seditions And Troubles", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
The best government ideally is the dictatorship of the best and wisest person; and if that person be not only wisest and best of the people as they are, but truly good and wise, and not in comparison with others as men see, but in true goodness and wisdom as God sees, then government by his will would be not only the rule of the greatest goodness and wisdom, but of these same in their most unhindered way; and this government would be the strongest, the best and the most free. Such a dictatorship would not be government by individual will, but by universal nature and by perfect excellence appearing in the purposes of the governor; his will would be mighty because expressing a law, first over it and then in it.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
"Of Government", Essays
A government for protecting the coarser interests of the body, business and bread only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption to decay.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
I guess this is why I hate governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by the fine print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.
JOHN STEINBECK
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.
JAMES MADISON
letter to Thomas Jefferson, Oct. 17, 1788
The distinguishing quality of Parliamentary government is, that in each stage of a public transaction there is a discussion; that the public assist at this discussion; that it can, through Parliament, turn out an administration which is not doing as it likes, and can put in an administration which will do as it likes. But the characteristic of a Presidential government is, in a multitude of cases, that there is no such discussion; that when there is a discussion the fate of Government does not turn upon it, and, therefore, the people do not attend to it; that upon the whole the administration itself is pretty much doing as it likes, and neglecting as it likes, subject always to the check that it must not too much offend the mass of the nation. The nation commonly does not attend, but if by gigantic blunders you make it attend, it will remember it and turn you out when its time comes; it will show you that your power is short, and so on the instant weaken that power; it will make your present life in office unbearable and uncomfortable by the hundred modes in which a free people can, without ceasing, act upon the rulers which it elected yesterday, and will have to reject or re-elect to-morrow.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism -- government.
RONALD REAGAN
Guns and Ammo, Sep. 1, 1975
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
JOHN ADAMS
Notes for an oration at Braintree, Spring 1772
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Declaration of Independence
The major problem--one of the major problems, for there are several--one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
The Road to Serfdom
What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Everybody's Political What's What
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
PLATO
The Republic