Quotes on Government, Governing, Politicians and Politics
In America, we have a system in which multi-billionaire elitists select millionaire candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties. The people are then free to select which candidates they think will screw them the least. We call this Democracy. -Gary Amirault
“They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.” Lord Edward Coke
=
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” Pericles, 430 B.C.
=
“When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government.” Thomas Paine
=
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Thomas Jefferson
=
“Whenever a man casts a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
=
“Nothing doth more harm in a state than when cunning men pass for wise.” Sir François Bacon (1561-1626)
=
“The state has had a vested interest in promoting attitudes that would tend to make us skeptical of our own abilities, fearful of the motives of others, and emotionally dependent upon external authorities for purpose and direction in our lives.” Butler D. Shaffer, professor, Southwestern University School of Law Source: Calculated Chaos, 1985
=
"Those Who Will Not be Governed By God Will Be Ruled by Tyrants" (William Penn)
=
Government Quotes:
'Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip.' ~George Orwell
=
"The State enjoys a monopoly not only on the lawful use of violence, but on the power to define the extent of its authority." ~ Butler Shaffer, 17 March 2006
=
"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.: Charles-Louis De Secondat - (1689-1755) Baron de Montesquieu - Source: The Spirit of the Laws, 1748
=
"Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive." -- Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) Historian and author Source: Freedom and Order, 1966
=
"Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation." -- Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: We, The Judges, 1956
=
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves
into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." -- John Locke, 1690
=
"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?" -- Herbert Spencer, The New Toryism, 1884
=
"People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men." -- H.L. Mencken
=
"Governments and citizens blend together only in the imagination of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens." -- James Bovard, Freedom in Chains
=
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out...without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. H.L. Mencken 1880-1956 American journalist, satarist, social critic
=
"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837
=
"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions." -- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787
=
"We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do." -- Auberon Herbert
=
"The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them..." -- Mark Twain
=
"It's important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want."-- Harry Browne
=
"As government grows, its increased power to grant favors or inflict pain attracts more people who would abuse the system." -- John Fund
=
"A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it." -- John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, 1861
=
"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else." -- Tom Clancy on Kudlow and Cramer 9/2/03
=
"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." -- Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
=
"Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1799
=
"The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone." - Thomas Jefferson
=
"This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... "And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." ~Thomas Jefferson
=
One can be assured that governments that spend heavily on “intelligence agencies” have at their highest levels “murders, liars and thieves” who “come but to kill steal and destroy.” John 8:44, 10:10 Amitai Tsedek
=
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution." Aldous Huxley
=
"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume." - Noam Chomsky (Note: This not outside terrorists who are doing this, it is people in high places within the system.)
=
"You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards, So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod." - Solon -- (c.638 BC-558 BC) Athenian statesman, lawmaker, Lyric poet, renowned as a founding father of the Athenian polis, one of the Seven Sages of Greece 550 B.C.
=
"And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government or information to the people. This last is the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson - (1743-1826)
=
When you start believing the government, . . . start questioning your beliefs.
=
"Socialism is GREAT - UNTIL you run out of other people's money". Margret Thatcher (former Prime Minister of Great Britain)
=
"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." Bob Lefevre
=
"When the government's boot is on your throat, whether
it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence." Gary Lloyd
=
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson
=
"I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power." Thomas Jefferson
=
"It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government. Thomas Paine
=
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - French economist, statesman and author Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
=
"In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy." - Matt Taibbi
=
"We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained." - Derrick Bell, Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth