Quotes About Government

Spinoza - la fonction de l'État est de garantir aux individus la liberté de leurs cultes et de leurs croyances sans en privilégier aucun ni aucune parmi eux.

If J. Edgar Hoover had something like Total Information Awareness, would his agents have used it, as they did all the other means available to them, to harass civil rights activists, reds, poor people's organizations, unionists, & peaceniks? Most certainly!

The cell wanted to overthrow the government and to do that, they were hurting their own people. Draden had never seen the logic in that, how could they convince themselves that what they were doing was justified because they believed in the endgame.

For example, under the Articles of Confederation, the national government could not tax people directly, as we do today, but must ask for money from the states, which could raise it however they wanted.

However, it was best known to the delegates as stated by the French thinker Montesquieu. He pointed out that When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or the same body of magistry, there can be no liberty; because apprehension may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Yet, although many priests were extremely poor, the Church as an institution was not only very rich but also powerful. It paid no taxes, voluntarily contributing instead a grant to the state every five years, and, as the amount of this grant was decided in the quinquennial Church Assemblies, the clergy were able to exercise a considerable influence over the policies of the Government.

What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.

In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.

The whole point about corruption in politics is that it can't be done, or done properly, without a bipartisan consensus.

Revolution from above, in some states and cases, is [...] often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.

Bad as political fiction can be, there is always a politician prepared to make it look artistic by comparison.

No one can deny, in face of the evidence, that it is easy, given military power, to produce a population of fanatical lunatics. It would be equally easy to produce a population of sane and reasonable people, but many governments do not wish to do so, since such people would fail to admire the politicians who are at the head of these governments.

Lefever describes his financing plan with modesty: 'Our detailed budget is realistic, but does not take into account the inflation that may occur before September 1983. The one place it could cut or reduce is item 7, the simultaneous interpreter services, if these services could be provided gratis by the U.S. government.' In other words, the only way to make a saving on a U.S.-subsidized project is to take money out of another U.S.-subsidized column.

During all this I never quite lost the surreal sense that I had become in some way a pro-government dissident and that of all the paradoxes of my little life this might have to register as the most acute one. ... For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

por qué iban «ellos» a molestarse con el tedio de la existencia humana, y menos aún con el del gobierno humano?

So there are laws that are defensible but unenforceable, and there are laws impossible to infringe. But in the New York of Mayor Bloomberg, there are laws that are not possible to obey, and that nobody can respect, and that are enforced by arbitrary power. The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law. Tyranny can be petty. And "petty" is not just Bloomberg's middle name. It is his name.

Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.

Durante la mayor parte de la historia de la humanidad la idea de un Estado total o absoluto estuvo íntimamente ligada a la religión.

She is merely acclimatizing herself, in accordance with a natural law, like an animal which changes its coat for the winter. Thousands of people like Frl. Schroeder are acclimatizing themselves. After all, whatever government is in power, they are doomed to live in this town.

So how do you preserve such freedom," Zehron countered, "if the state itself coerces the people to follow its rules?

There are constraints on freedom, but only to the extent that different individuals' freedoms come into conflict. It is the responsibility of the state to moderate those conflicts equitably.

They don't cover what to do with a dead hooker. That's a whole different program. Political science, I think.

Oh, and a huge Federal Building that looked like it was being molested by a giant steel pterodactyl, but evidently that was just the government trying to get away from their standard bomb shelter architecture to something more aesthetically appealing, especially if you liked Godzilla porn.

Toda libertad que puede ser concedida, también puede ser suprimida.