Quotes About Government

There's sometimes an impulse to pit the suffering of the white working class against that of African Americans or members of other minority groups. That is a mistake. Government policies have poorly served the working class of every complexion, and we need solidarity rather than strife among those so overlooked.

Imagine the outcry if the Pakistani or Indian governments were burning women alive at those rates. Yet when the government is not directly involved people shrug.

As hostility toward government spread in America, there have been determined efforts to cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy, and then "starve the beast"--using reduced revenue to justify cuts in services for the disadvantaged. This is both disingenuous and cruel, as well as out of step with the advanced world.

Pointing to a trend in Western democracies, Agamben posits that the declaration of an emergency state of exception itself has gradually been replaced by a "generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government" (2003/2005, 14), that is, the state of exception or emergency has become integrated in the normal functioning of the state.

The secret of good government is to let men alone.

For this reason, within China the four state-owned banks in the 1980s were invariably referred to as "specialized banks" (????

If government subsidies to corporations were a sufficient criterion to label a country's economic system as "state capitalist," many market economies would qualify.

But initially government regulation still prevented farmers from leaving their home villages, giving rise to the phrase "leaving the land without leaving the village" (?????

The philosophy was nationalization, centralization, control, regulation. Now this had to end.

If it does not concern you that the very first act of virtually every totalitarian regime over the last hundred years has been to disarm its population, then you are beyond help.

What the F.D.I.C. does is to put the full faith and credit of the United States government behind every savings account in the nation, up to a limit that has changed over the years and stands now at $100 000.

The victorious Conservative/Liberal coalition government honoured its promises and proposed making it far harder for libel tourists to use the London courts to punish their critics.

At the most basic level of protecting a writer's personal safety, democratic countries offer a further advantage. If you steal hundreds of thousands of documents from the Russian state and put them online, the FSB will try to kill you. Steal American secrets, and the CIA will not.

they illustrated an unacknowledged truth about contemporary writing: reporters, editors and artists in Britain, America and most of Europe are not afraid of politicians. They are frightened of Islamists, and do not run cartoons that might offend them. They are frightened of oligarchs and CEOs, and worry about libel and the ability of the wealthy to bend the ear of their proprietors. But they are not frightened about leaking the secrets or criticising the actions of elected governments.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen has been the Queensland premier the whole time we've been in Australia, and the state is a national joke for having a Deep North government thats said to resemble governments of a generation or more ago in some parts of the US Deep South - governments that always talk about getting things done and never talk about rights.

If his ethos had inspired those in charge of cutting government waste, we'd be turning a surplus in a finger snap.

Even as he took firm and reassuring command of the federal government, Johnson began to recast the civil rights struggle from a legal question to a ringing moral issue.* With a credibility that no northerner could claim, Johnson took his case for equal rights directly to the South.

The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy.

To be fair, what looks like conspiracy often turns out to be bureaucracy.

I believe that the Framers of the Constitution made their intent clear when they wrote the First Amendment. I believe they wanted to keep the new government from endorsing one religion over another, not erase the public consciousness or common faith.

The prime minister had abused his position as minister in charge of the SIS to embarrass another politician only months before an election.

Revolution is progressive and seeks the strengthening of the state; rebellion is reactionary and seeks its disappearance. The revolutionary is a potential government official; the rebel is a reactionary in action.

Wise politics is the art of invigorating society and weakening the State.

The two terms of the democratic alternative today—oppressive bureaucracy or repugnant plutocracy—are canceling each other out. Combining into a single term: opulent bureaucracy. At once repugnant and oppressive.