quotations about government
The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is the pathology of modern politics that we have become so disgusted with self-government that our automatic response to government is criticism. Freedom is always freedom from government; liberty is always liberty from what government would otherwise do.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
Frankly, I'm fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.
BILL CLINTON
speech at Democratic National Convention, July 16, 1992
Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
The State, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Rousseau's Theory of the State
But if safety be their common concern, the good of the governors must correspond with the good of the governed, and the interest of the servant must coincide with the interest of the master.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
So, like today, the government machine kept, as it does, the same cogs, and I can only change the hand that turns the crank.
ANSELME BELLEGARRIGUE
Au fait! Au fait! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique
The Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in the House of Commons, Nov. 12, 1936
As yet the few rule by their hold, not over the reason of the multitude, but over their imaginations, and their habits; over their fancies as to distant things they do not know at all, over their customs as to near things which they know very well.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
fragment of a speech from July 1, 1854, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
Prudence ... will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Declaration of Independence