Government Quotes

It is be­cause freedom means the renun­ciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.

~ Friedrich A. Hayek

I cannot live to hear the news from England.But I do prophesy th' election lightsOn Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.So tell him, with th' occurents, more and less,Which have solicited - the rest is silence.

~ William Shakespeare

The Bill of Rights wasn’t enacted to give us any rights. It was enacted so the Government could not take away from us any rights that we already had.

~ Kenneth Eade

Many such an official, upon winning a foothold in City Hall, thinks only of his own cohorts, and his own gain. So it is not surprising that public affairs grow stagnant. Truly, cannot fathom such minds! I can think of nothing so satisfying as doing public good in as many ways as an official can. Think, for an instant, as to just what a city is. As I said long ago, it is not an array of buildings, parks and fountains. No. A city is a living thing! It is, actually, human;for it is a group of humanity growing up in daily contact; and if officials adopt as a slogan, “all I can do,” and not “all I can grab,” only its suburban boundary can limit its growth.

~ Ernest Vincent Wright

[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.

~ Lawrence Lessig

There could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that by the mercy of God they who are endowed with true piety of life if they have the skill for ruling people should also have the power.

~ Augustine Of Hippo

Poverty can be brought about by law, it cannot be forbidden by law.

~ Isabel Paterson

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.

~ Isabel Paterson

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. &It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.

~ Aristotle

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

~ Albert Camus

Ever wonder why the media never refers to 18 or 19 year old American soldiers as armed teens?

~ Stefan Molyneux

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul....I was wrong to follow the meanness of Conservatism. I should have been trying to help people instead of taking advantage of them. I don't hate anyone anymore. For the first time in my life I don't hate somebody. I have nothing but good feelings toward people. I've found Jesus Christ – It's that simple. He's made a difference. (Reagan's campaign manager death-bed confession in Feb. 1991 article for Life Magazine )

~ Lee Atwater

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

~ Aristotle

The government system we have now is set up just like that of Rome and is changing into a system I call Corpocracism (Babylon, United States). Corpocracism is a word derived from some entities of feudalism, democracy, capitalism, classism, and corporatism to form a government system into a dictatorship and police state. This system is being brought about by a group of people in our own government, corporations, financial institutions and foreign entities. It is an ideology of hypocrisy that is leading to an JerUSAlem (America) that will sale off every aspect of its nations people to be captive to foreign entities such as corporations, governments, lawyers, financial institutions, banks, individuals and groups of individuals.

~ Brian David Mattson

America is a nation of illusions; illusions in the media, schools and government — an iron curtain of propaganda.

~ Bryant Mcgill

In his 1907 retirement address, Joseph Pulitzer urged his successors to always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

~ Joseph Pulitzer

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

~ Leonard Bernstein

…it is the public sector I find more interesting, because governments and other non-market institutions have long suffered from the innovation malaise of top-heavy bureaucracies. Today, these institutions have an opportunity to fundamentally alter the way they cultivate and promote good ideas. The more the government thinks of itself as an open platform instead of a centralized bureaucracy, the better it will be for all of us, citizens and activists, and entrepreneurs alike.

~ Steven Johnson

Too many young Indigenous members of our community are being caught up in the criminal justice system, with an increasing number of cases resulting in notably unjust and undue outcomes, primarily due to the lack of resources available

~ Abdullah Reslan Lawyer

Every culture has its distinctive and normal system of government. Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism, moderated by assassination.

~ Unknown Russian

He concluded that governments were like wars: the reasons and the forces might change, but it was still the same dying over the same soil.

~ Nick Harkaway

But there's nothing wrong with being scared. I think everyone's a little scared. Even the government.

~ David Patneaude

The mass hallucination of the twentieth century is this: that all these national governments, which each year kill or threaten way more humans than they protect, and take a big chunk of your income to do so, are for some reason a great idea, an inevitable force of fucking nature.

~ Tyler Mcmahon

Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime; whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, or by millions calling themselves a government.

~ Lysander Spooner

Private property is redundant. Public property is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn't private it's stolen.

~ Gustave De Molinari

You cannot have an agency that defends your property, which also has the right to violate your property rights at will. That's like hiring a bodyguard that you pay to beat you up randomly.

~ Stefan Molyneux

There's a whole generation growing up thinking...the government exists to care for them.

~ Dave Ramsey

In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force

~ Frantz Fanon

It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.

~ Albert Jay Nock

Tyranny is the wolf cast by the shadows of sheep.

~ Stefan Molyneux

July 4, the day we celebrate giving our political masters independence from conscience, morality, consequences for evil doing, and basic social and economic reality.The fireworks are the glowing tears of your children's incinerated futures.Cheer happy slaves - your only chains are your deluded joys. Cheer and sing, because for you, songs of death are easier than questions of life.

~ Stefan Molyneux

That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Statism is an unnatural disaster.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Rights are something made up by governments to make you feel like you're buying something with your taxes.

~ Stefan Molyneux

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

A nanny state is hostile to liberty. Any attempt to institute or continue it should be opposed, root and branch. Government intervention is never the solution; it is always part of the problem.

~ Laurence M. Vance

History is the same story with different costumes.

~ Stefan Molyneux

The government is not your salvation. The government is not your road to prosperity. Hard work, education will take you far beyond what any government program can ever promise.

~ Mia Love