quotations about government
In some respects government is like a game; before the players can even take the field to compete, they need to agree on a set of rules that decide how the game is to be played. Constitutions are the rules of the political game - who can vote, who can stand for office, what powers they are to have, the rights and duties of citizens and so on. Without these basic rules politics would degenerate into arbitrariness, brute force, or anarchy.
KENNETH NEWTON & JAN W. VAN DETH
Foundations of Comparative Politics
Yet it is instructive to trace the various causes, which produced the strength of one nation, and the decline and weakness of another; to learn by what arts one man has been able to subjugate millions of his fellow creatures, the motives which have put him upon action, and the causes of his success--sometimes driven by ambition and a lust of power; at other times, swallowed up by religious enthusiasms, blind bigotry, and ignorant zeal; sometimes enervated with luxury and debauched by pleasure, until the most powerful nations have become a prey and been subdued by these Sirens, when neither the number of their enemies, nor the prowess of their arms, could conquer them.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
letter to John Quincy Adams, December 26, 1783
The proper function of a government is to make it easy for people to do good and difficult for them to do evil.
JIMMY CARTER
Why Not the Best?
I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare -- I have no use for him either.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
Government has almost always been a barrier against which intellect has had to struggle; and society has made its chief progress by the minds of private individuals, who have outstripped their rulers, and gradually shamed them into truth and wisdom.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter -- that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.
BARACK OBAMA
speech to joint session of Congress, sep. 9, 2009
A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Address at San Diego Exposition, Oct. 2, 1935
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1801
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
EDWARD R. MURROW
attributed, People Before Profit
Government is the most dangerous institution known to man. Throughout history it has violated the rights of men more than any individual or group of individuals could do: it has killed people, enslaved them, sent them to forced labor and concentration camps, and regularly robbed and pillaged them of the fruits of their expended labor.
JOHN HOSPERS
The Libertarian Alternative
Governments are nothing more or less than gigantic criminal conspiracies, overgrown street gangs with no claims whatsoever to legitimacy. They are funded by theft and the basis of all their operations is aggression. They're no more entitled to keep their activities secret than any other gaggle of murderers, rapists and thieves.
TOMAS L. KNAPP
"At war with the concept of secrecy itself", August 25, 2013
A government is the complexion of the people--healthy as they are healthy, diseased as they are diseased.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Most traditional governments divide people, setting them against each other to weaken the society and make it governable.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
If you have a government of good laws and bad men, you will have a bad government. For bad men will not be bound by good laws.
ROBERT LEFEVRE
"Unlimited Government", Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, Dec. 29, 1961
Let the people think they govern, and they will be govern'd.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The World As I See It
In all governments, there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty, and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Origin of Government", Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary
Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.
JOHN BASIL BARNHILL
"Indictment of Socialism No. 3", Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism
Government is like a sincere alcoholic, who does not want to cause irreparable damage to his liver and yet cannot give up excessive drinking.
N. S. SAKSENA
Terrorism History and Facets