Quotes About Government

Reply to Objection 1: There is nothing wholly evil in the world, for evil is ever founded on good, as shown above (Q[48], A[3]). Therefore something is said to be evil through its escaping from the order of some particular good. If it wholly escaped from the order of the Divine government, it would wholly cease to exist.

We call laws just from three perspectives: (1) from their end, namely, when they are ordained for the common good; (2) from their authority, namely, when the laws enacted do not surpass the power of the lawmakers; (3) from their form, namely, when they impose proportionately equal burdens on citizens for the common good.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

First, a man of sense would have known that a single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that, since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were exactly alike; and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an immense number of cases.

At a dinner which a wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's health.

During the course of his reign, the amir experienced over forty uprisings against his government. Had these been better coordinated or come all at once, Abdur Rahman would have undoubtedly been toppled. One of the amir's political strengths was that he aimed his attacks at specific targets and thereby kept conflict from spreading too widely against him at any one time.

The progressives gave us the professor of social science, the scholar-activist, the social worker, the muckraking journalist, and the economic expert advising or serving in government.

Mill was no apologist for capitalism. When he wrote, "laisser-faire should be the general practice," he was not uncritically extolling the virtues of free markets, the manifold failures of which he had so scrupulously catalogued.15 Mill, rather, feared that government cures were worse than market diseases, and he spoke from experience.

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero.

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and gives in the long run a net result of zero.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom we have to say, Like People like Government.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit.

The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault, but it re- mains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised. —Michael Oakeshott, 19831

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

As it drew nearer, excitement grew intense. Swarms of adventurers expecting the overthrow of the Government crowded into Washington.

I'm still a reservist. We have three drilling reservists in the Senate. Senator Graham serves in the Air Force, Senator Brown serves in the Army, and I serve in the Navy.

The government shutdown, we all know that's a sham. I mean, are they really going to just go to the entire Army and Navy and say, 'You're fired.'

By any measure, CapitalSource outperformed both our direct competitors and the financial services industry in general, particularly in the context of the near collapse of the financial services industry where 19 of the 20 largest financial institutions in the country either failed or were bailed out by the government.

The nearest approach to immortality on earth is a government bureau.

During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was excellent, crime rose again.

The Founding Fathers: A bunch of old white guys who are making it nearly impossible for modern government to pick our doctors, teach our children, correct our diets, and save our money.