Government Quotes

Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.” “Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.” (The Rise of Political Correctness)

~ Angelo Codevilla

When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.

~ Ayn Rand

There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.

~ Ayn Rand

There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.

~ Ayn Rand

A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration.

~ Robert Higgs

Collectivism is the philosophy of every cockroach and sewer rat: If I want it, I must need it, and if I need it, I have a right to it, and if I have a right to it, it doesn't matter what I have to do to get it. Thefact that such an inherently animalistic, short-sighted, anti-humanviewpoint is now painted by some as compassionate and progressive does not make it any more sane, or any less dangerous.

~ Larken Rose

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual.

~ Auberon Herbert

There are two principles between which there can be no compromise—liberty and coercion.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

~ Friedrich A. Hayek

Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.

~ Ayn Rand

What ranks above all else for economic and political reconstruction is a radical change of ideologies. Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.

~ Robert Higgs

The overwhelming tendency of markets is to bring people together, break down prejudices, persuade people of the need to cooperate regardless of class, race, religion, sex/gender, and physical ability. The same is obviously and especially true of sexual orientation. It is the market that rewards people who put aside their biases and seek gains through trade. This is why states devoted to racialist and hateful policies always resort to violence in control of the marketplace.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world’s smartest people, all top philosophers and not stupid people, for many thousands of years before the age of the enlightenment. It still is.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Growing economies are built by billions of actors behaving according to their own interests, coordinated through institutions that no one in particular created.Realizing this requires humility, a trait that is in short supply among would-be dictators, politicians, and bureaucrats, which is precisely why these groups are the proven enemies of prosperity in all times and places.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims—as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force—he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious; reason, to him, is a means of deception; he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason—and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.

~ Ayn Rand

Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.

~ Henry George

Price controls almost invariably produce black markets, where prices are not only higher than the legally permitted prices, but also higher than they would be in a free market, since the legal risks must also be compensated. While small-scale black markets may function in secrecy, large-scale black markets usually require bribes to officials to look the other way.

~ Thomas Sowell

The proposal to quit voting is basically revolutionary; it amounts to a shifting of power from one group to another, which is the essence of revolution. As soon as the nonvoting movement got up steam, the politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution. Measures to enforce voting would be instituted; fines would be imposed for violations, and prison sentences would be meted out to repeaters.

~ Frank Chodorov

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

~ James Madison

The ones who are insane enough to think that they can rule the world are always the ones who do.

~ Stefan Molyneux

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.

~ Isabel Paterson

Any time someone gives you drugs, the purpose is to subdue. Always. Whether it is from a dealer, a friend, your mother/brother/sister/son, or your government--especially your government--the intention is to subdue, and always to feed another motive. Why? Because in getting high, your power and your intellect are blunted. Can the motive ever be in your best interests? Governments notoriously use sex, drink, and drugs to subdue their people. Notoriously. And we're falling for it.

~ Northern Adams

Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must be constantly won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined and good state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

~ Pope Benedict Xvi

Electricity should not be banned, it just needs much better government regulation and understanding by the medical profession of the full range of toxicity that it presents to the human.

~ Steven Magee

Did you consider anything like the Infected?' Simon had asked.'Not quite. But some of our other contingency plans might help us out with this particular mission.

~ A. Ashley Straker

If you want to be lied to, all you have to do is believe everything that the government tells you.

~ Steven Magee

What the new government of Nigeria and other African governments must do, is to start a massive reorientation campaign in the culture of the dignity of labour.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Simply put, here amid the kingdoms of this world we have no continuing city. That’s why we dare not become attached to the passing values of any human culture.

~ Harold L. Senkbeil

Ferbin's father had had the same robustly pragmatic view of religion as he’d had of everything else. In his opinion, only the very poor and downtrodden really needed religion, to make their laborious lives more bearable. People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution.

~ Iain M. Banks

Ferbin’s father had had the same robustly pragmatic view of religion as he’d had of everything else. In his opinion, only the very poor and downtrodden really needed religion, to make their laborious lives more bearable. People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution.

~ Iain M. Banks

That man is formed for social life is an observation which, upon our first inquiry, presents itself immediately to our view, and our reason approves that wise and generous principle which actuated the first founders of civil government, an institution which hat its origin in the weakness of individuals, and hath for its end the strength and security of all; and so long as the means of effecting this important end are thoroughly known and religiously attended to government is one of the richest blessings to mankind, and ought to be held in the highest veneration

~ Joseph Warren

Bureaucrats and Politicians are different people, work of Bureaucrats makes us hate Politicians.

~ Amit Kalantri

The moment you hand over YOUR responsibility to manage your own rights, morality, and freedoms - to the government, that is the moment democracy fails.

~ Christina Engela

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.

~ Baruch Spinoza

We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

~ Edward Snowden

The law says you have the right to hold a nigger, but begging the law's pardon, it lies. . . Is everything right because the law allows it? Suppose they'd pass a law taking away your liberty and making you a slave?

~ Solomon Northup