Quotes on Government, Governing, Politicians and Politics
“As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom.” Lyn Nofziger
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“As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people.” James Bovard
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“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day” Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906
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“But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people’s liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons. The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket.” Mark Twain
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“By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.” Thomas Jefferson
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“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” Harry S. Truman
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“Can we truly expect that those who aim to exploit us can be trusted to educate us?” Eric Schaub, activist, speaker, author
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“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience… Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty.” Howard Zinn
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“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” Aesop (c. 550 B.C.), legendary Greek fabulist
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“Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror.” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
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“Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It can easily be lost, but is never fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle.” William H. Hastie
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“Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.” Joseph P. Kennedy
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“Each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office.” Fyrefly1985 Niccolo Machiavelli
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“Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.” Mahatma Gandhi
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“For in every city these two opposite parties [people vs aristocracy] are to be found, arising from the desire of the populace to avoid oppression of the great, and the desire of the great to command and oppress the people....For when the nobility see that they are unable to resist the people, they unite in exalting one of their number and creating him prince, so as to be able to carry out their own designs under the shadow of his authority.” (Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. IX)
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“Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.” William Ewart Gladstone
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“Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” Louis D. Brandeis
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“It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.” John W. Gardner
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“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” Thomas Jefferson
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“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is slavery.” Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish author