Quotes About Government

Still another reason why the payment of taxes implies no consent, or pledge, to support the government, is that the taxpayer does not know, and has no means of knowing, who the particular individuals are who compose "the government." To him "the government" is a myth, an abstraction, an incorporeality, with which he can make no contract, and to which he can give no consent, and make no pledge. He knows it only through its pretended agents. "The government" itself he never sees.

Not knowing who the particular individuals are, who call themselves "the government," the taxpayer does not know whom he pays his taxes to. All he knows is that a man comes to him, representing himself to be the agent of "the government"—that is, the agent of a secret band of robbers and murderers, who have taken to themselves the title of "the government," and have determined to kill everybody who refuses to give them whatever money they demand.

A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.

Previous to the war, there were some grounds for saying that—in theory, at least, if not in practice—our government was a free one; that it rested on consent. But nothing of that kind can be said now, if the principle on which the war was carried on by the North, is irrevocably established. If that principle be not the principle of the Constitution, the fact should be known. If it be the principle of the Constitution, the Constitution itself should be at once overthrown.

It is with government, as Caesar said it was in war, that money and soldiers mutually supported each other; that with money he could hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money.

That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.

It is plain, therefore, that if, when the Constitution says treason, it means treason—treason in fact, and nothing else—there is no ground at all for pretending that the Southern people have committed that crime. But if, on the other hand, when the Constitution says treason, it means what the Czar and the Kaiser mean by treason, then our government is, in principle, no better than theirs; and has no claim whatever to be considered a free government.

The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.

Still another of the frauds of these men is, that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish, "a government of consent." The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. This idea was the dominant one on which the war was carried on; and it is the dominant one, now that we have got what is called "peace.

N'importe quel groupe de scélérats, pourvu qu'ils aient assez d'argent pour l'entreprendre, peuvent décider qu'ils sont un gouvernement; car, pourvu qu'ils aient de l'argent, ils peuvent engager des soldats, et utiliser ces soldats pour extorquer davantage d'argent, et ainsi contraindre tout le monde à obéir à leurs volontés.

Le fait est que le gouvernement, comme un bandit de grand chemin, dit à un individu: "La bourse ou la vie." Quantité de taxes, ou même la plupart, sont payées sous la contrainte d'une telle menace.

STEVENSON AND GRIFFITH, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM, (6th ed. 2006). THE URBAN LAWYER for permission to use material from New Federal Tax Legislation Affecting Tax Exempt Obligations, by Neil P. Arkuss; reprinted with permission of THE URBAN LAWYER, the national quarterly journal on state and local government of the American Bar Association, as it appeared in Volume 16, Number 4 (Fall 1984), Robert H. Freilich, editor. New York University School

We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. ... I'm very proud to be a member of the stupid party. ... Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that's both evil and stupid. That's called bipartisanship.

Another U.S. official disturbed by the prospect of a Washington-Tokyo truce was the Treasury's Harry Dexter White. "Persons in our government," White declaimed, "are hoping to betray the cause of the heroic Chinese people.

We cannot create peace by building weapons of war. We cannot save lives by designing things that kill. And we cannot keep democracy alive if government lies to the voters, the people who run the country

The People's Republic of China loses its republican sheen when it comes to territory and turns imperial even if it cannot always get imperious.

His insistence that his government deal only with the Right had made it a hostage to nationalist interest groups and alienated the rest of the country. His embracing and encouragement of a public rhetoric which bristled with violence, racial stereotyping and threats had helped to bolster an image abroad of a nation hungering for conflict.

Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation.

At dinners, he boasted about his future conquests over the Russian "subhumans." He spoke warmly of the way the United States government had exterminated so many of the Native Americans in the nineteenth century, seizing and settling their land.

And everyone understood that Stalin was one thing and the country was another.

I was like, Then what is it? A republic. It's a republic. Why? Because we elect people to vote for us. That's my point. So why is it like that? Because if it was a democracy, everybody would have to decide about everything. I thought about that. We could have everybody vote. From the feeds. Instantaneous. Then it would be a democracy.

In the first year and a half of Shostakovich's life, roughly 4,500 government officials were injured or killed in assassination attempts by radicals. In his toddler years, the government recorded 20,000 terrorist acts across the empire, with more than 7,500 fatalities.

My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.

I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.