Government Quotes

“Is this government of Britain's Isle, and this the royalty of Albion's King?”

“What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”

“The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly.”

“Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,--that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.”

“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”

“Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.”

“Government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves.”

“Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.”

“The less government we have the better.”

“And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.”

“Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.”

“No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance.”

“I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.”

“Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police.”

“The State is our neighbors; our neighbors are the State.”

“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.”

“The President proclaims war, and those Senators who dissent are not those who know better, but those who can afford to...Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.”

“Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.”

“The wise and just man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; and if all went down, he and such as he would quite easily combine in a new and better constitution.”

“A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don't understand why it's the government's responsibility.”

“Do not criticize your government when out of the country. Never cease to do so when at home”

“When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.”

“We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges”

“Democracy is a very bad form of government ... but all the others are so much worse.”

“The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.”