“There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.” ——Bertrand Russell
“For those looking for security, be forewarned that there’s nothing more insecure than a political promise.” ——Harry Browne
“The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues — not faction, but rather distraction — there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil… Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.” ——Plato
“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
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” ——George Washington
“Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.” ——Frank Zappa
“Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible.” ——Robert LeFevre
“Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.” ——J. Krishnamurti
“The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.” ——Frank Kent
“Modern fascism should be properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state, military and corporate power.” ——Benito Mussolini
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world — no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” ——Woodrow Wilson
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“I would rather have a free press and no government, than a government and no free press.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“I wouldn’t call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either.” ——Edward Zehr
“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.” ——Justice Joseph Story
“In relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation’s moral and material health. The whole educational system, theater, film, literature, the press and broadcasting — all these will be used as a means to this end.” ——Adolf Hitler
“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
“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.” ——P. J. O’Rourke
“If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.” ——Henry Commager
“If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.” ——Noah Webster
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” ——Henry David Thoreau
“In dealing with the state, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man’s expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.” ——Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.” ——Thich Nhat Hanh
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way.” ——Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” ——President Eisenhower
“It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” ——Josef Stalin
“In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” ——Erasmus
“It is a government of the people by the people for the people no longer — it is a government of corporations by corporations for corporations.” ——Rutherford B. Hayes
“Hierarchies make some people dependent on others, blame the dependent for their dependency, and then use that dependency as a justification for further exercise of authority.” ——Martha Ackelsberg
“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
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” ——Voltaire
“The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that the end justifies the means — to declare that the government may commit crimes — would bring terrible retribution.” ——Justice Louis D. Brandeis
“A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy… While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader… If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.” ——John Adams
“It is the utmost folly — it is just short of suicide — to take the position that citizens of any country should hold their tongues for fear of causing distress to the immediate and sometimes tortuous policies of their leaders.” ——Wendell Lewis Willkie
“There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.” ——Peyton Conway March
“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” ——Andrew Jackson
“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.” ——Justice William O. Douglas
“It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very clever at covering up what they do.” ——Andrew Greeley
“It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.” ——Rutherford B. Hayes
“Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty.” ——Rutherford B. Hayes
“He serves his party best who serves the country best.” ——Rutherford B. Hayes
“Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.” ——William Penn
“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to office.” ——Aesop
“Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.” ——Erich Fromm
“No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition.” ——Benjamin Disraeli
“No matter who you are or what you believe, you have to understand that some day the worst control-freaks among your bitterest enemies will control the federal government, and you better have restored effective, working constitutional limitations on that government before that time arrives.” ——Rick Gaber
“Given the low level of competence among politicians, every American should become a libertarian. The government that governs least is certainly the best choice when fools, opportunists and grafters run it. When power is for sale, then the government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better.” ——Charley Reese
“Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” ——Sir John Harrington
“Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.” ——Sir Francis Bacon
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.” ——Thomas B. Reed
“Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.” ——Andrew Jackson
“Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.” ——Hugo L. Black
“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
“Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.” ——James Bryce
“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.” ——General Douglas MacArthur
“Reason and ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.” ——Thomas Paine
“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” ——Alex Carey
“The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.” ——Plutarch
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years.
These nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage.” ——Sir Alex Fraser Tyler