Government Quotes

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 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.

~ Cory Doctorow

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns in to universal, rather than religion-specific, values... it requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.Now I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, to take one example, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

~ Barack Obama

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law. - Romeo

~ William Shakespeare

the ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security... In fact the true aim of government is liberty.

~ Baruch Spinoza

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well

~ Charles W. Colson

We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices.... Government has to make those choices for people.

~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.

~ Julian Assange

The only way to make a difference is to acquire power.

~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

In bad countries the government takes care of everyone. In the best ones that's not necessary!‏

~ Celso Cukierkorn

In response to my question about how we might rein in the empire, he said, That's why I'm meeting with you. Only you in the United States can change it. Your government created this problem and your people must solve it. You've got to insist that Washington honor its commitment to democracy, even when deomcratically elected leaders nationalize your corrupting corporations. You must take control of your corporations and your government. The people of the United States have a great deal of power. You need to come to grips with this. There's no alternative. We in Brazil have our hands tied. So do the Venezeulans. And the Nigerians. It's up to you.

~ John Perkins

Well, then he would be at war with the government, and death was an unfortunate side effect of any revolution. Change always had a price tag. But once he took over, the people would realize he was a better ruler than the disorganized, self-interested mob that called themselves Congress -- men who didn't know anything, being led by a president who knew even less.

~ C.j. Hill

Are you saying the end of human suffering began with an amusement park?”“I’m saying the end of human suffering is a myth.”“But everyone’s happy.”“You think that just because a person doesn’t question the way the system works that means they agree with it? And if they do agree that must mean they’re happy? Are you happy?

~ T.s. Welti

One of the arguments that authoritarian governments use to ward off the call for greater political freedom is to argue that American-style democracy is no guarantee of good policy.... Over the years, I’ve grown used to these arguments, and my response has rarely wavered: Sure, we might make dumb choices sometimes, but we will defend, to the end, the right to make choices at all, because we believe that our collective conscience, freely expressed, will eventually lead us in the right direction. When it comes to guns, it is getting harder to muster that argument abroad. Every new shooting, every new failure of will and citizenship, slashes another hole in our credibility as a way of life.

~ Evan Osnos

You are dealing with national security. Anything labeled a national security issie is taken out from the system. There is no due process, no lawyers. They may do with us what they wish. Fear is a government's greatest weapon. With it, they can convince a people that they need to abandon their freedom. In exchange, they get safety. Of course, you just trade one monster for another, but by the time the people realize this, it is too late. -- Excerpt from Superhero.

~ Victor Methos

A country of free men is not free if they are owned by somebody else.

~ Joseph P. Sekula

One of the most unique aspects among many about the USA is that our transitions of 'power' have almost always been peaceful. This is very unique in all of history and in the world today.

~ R. Alan Woods

The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to make ourselves; and that our renascence or our ruin will alike, ultimately and equally, testify with a trumpet to our liberty.- The Illustrated London News, July 10, 1920 Issue.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Ever since 1945 the federal government has held and indeed increased its importance as the first customer of the American economy. Government spending had been the primary economic stimulant and to increase it had been the goal of hundreds of interest groups; hopes of balanced budgets and cheap, business-like administration always ran aground upon this fact. What was more, the United States was a democracy; whatever the doctrinaire objections to it, and however much rhetoric might be devoted to attacking it, a welfare state slowly advanced because voters wanted it that way. These facts gradually made the old ideal of totally free enterprise, unchecked and uninvaded by the influence of government, unreal.

~ J.m. Roberts

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

...they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve, and if you do, you never get the results you expected.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.

~ Otto Von Bismarck

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large...

~ Thomas Jefferson

Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.

~ Jasper Fforde

But we don't have to react. That's what I'm saying. A police force, like a government, should be above that. Just because we're provoked doesn't mean we have to act. -- Still Life

~ Louise Penny

If your party serves the powerful and well-funded interests, and there's no limit to what you can spend, you have a permanent, structural advantage. We're averaging fifty-dollar checks in our campaign, and trying to ward off these seven- or eight-figure checks on the other side. That disparity is pretty striking, and so are the implications. In many ways, we're back in the Gilded Age. We have robber barons buying the government.

~ David Axelrod

Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correct but that they are also good. Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone one the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, cold-hearted, a sellout, evil-in league with the devil, he might say, if he didn't think religious terminology too coarse for our secular age. To this day one will hear of people who fell for Communism in a big way let off the hook because they were sincere; if one's heart is in the right place, nothing else matters, even if one's naive opinions made it easier for tyrants to murder millions.

~ Joseph Epstein

If I went on a killing spree that left thousands of people dead, I'd be branded as the worst kind of criminal. So why it is okay for the government to do exactly that?

~ Michelle Templet

One of the (many) problems with government is not that power corrupts or even that it is magnetic to corruptible people; rather, it is that we have been conditioned to tolerate corruption in power, and so we don't even try to hold our politicians accountable.

~ Michelle Templet

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.

~ William Ewart Gladstone

Deep down, I have come to the conclusion that the reason (children) are such a low priority to the great human institutions that seek to control this world, both secular and Christian, is that an invisible battle, a spiritual war, rages over each and every child. It is above us and beyond us and engages the full fury of the hosts of both heaven and hell. Children may be ignored by government, church, and mission – but not by Satan or God Almighty.

~ Wess Stafford

Thieves, spies and other wise guys are working everywhere…including in branches of the U.S. government.

~ Sherry Morris

Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.

~ Henry David Thoreau

General assumptions often lead to erroneous conclusions, but one cannot go far wrong in always assuming that whatever one's government is saying is a lie.

~ Michelle Templet

[David] Maraniss sees [Barack] Obama as a man with a moviegoer's or writer's sensibility, where he is both participating and observing himself participating, and views much of the political process as ridiculous or surreal, even as he is deep into it.

~ Jane Mayer

One of the (many) problems with government is that they are usually so preoccupied with whether or not they can do something that they fail to consider whether or not they should.

~ Michelle Templet

The choice is yours: trust the government or trust Mother Nature.

~ John Cannell

Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability.

~ Benjamin Harrison

…egalitarianism and despotism do not exclude each other, but usually go hand in hand. To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of a society equal, and then to maintain this equality for a long period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, ‘We start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism.’ Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.

~ Ryszard Legutko

While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.

~ Abraham Lincoln