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Quotes About Government

Federal Service'? Parasitism, pure and simple. A functionless organ, utterly obsolete, living on the taxpayers. A decidedly expensive way for inferior people who otherwise would be unemployed to live at public expense for a term of years, then give themselves airs for the rest of their lives. Is that what you want to do?
~ Robert A. Heinlein
I don't pay attention to politics." "You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat." "I
~ Robert A. Heinlein
There is an old picture of a people traveling by sleigh through deep woods—pursued by wolves. Every now and then they grab one of their number and toss him to the wolves. That's conscription even if you call it "selective service" and pretty it up with USOs and "veterans' benefits
~ Robert A. Heinlein
I don't pay attention to politics." "You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
~ Robert A. Heinlein
all public employees have larceny in their hearts or they wouldn't be feeding at the public trough
~ Robert A. Heinlein
stupidity, and self-seeking, he resembles his fellow Americans but is a notch or two above average. Then look at the man who will replace him if his government topples.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom—if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
Seems a funny way to run things. But of course I've never paid taxes." "You just think you haven't. You started the day you were born. We may eliminate death someday but I doubt if we'll ever eliminate taxes.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
Any government that gets to be too big and too successful gets to be a nuisance. The Federation got that way—it started out decently enough—and now it has to be trimmed down to size. So that the citizens can enjoy some 'looseness'.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional . . . for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments
~ Robert A. Heinlein
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future
~ Robert A. Heinlein
When are the territorial states going to learn that they cannot possibly win against corporate states?
~ Robert A. Heinlein
It [now] seems to me that every time we manage to establish one freedom, they take another one away. Maybe two. And that seems to me characteristic of a society as it gets older, and more crowded, and higher taxes, and more laws.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
İdareli bir demokrasi muhteÅŸem bir ÅŸeydir, Manuel, idare edenler için... en büyük gücü de 'Özgür'ün 'sorumluluk sahibi ' olarak tan?mland??? ve neyin 'sorumsuz ' olduÄŸunu idarecilerin belirlediÄŸi 'özgür bas?n'd?r.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of weapons
~ Robert Anton Wilson
MR. KHARIS: 'Does Mr. Celine seriously suggest that the United States Government is in need of a guardian?' MR. CELINE: 'I am merely offering a way out for your client. Any private individual with a record of such incessant murder and robbery would be glad to cop an insanity plea. Do you insist that your client was in full possession of its reason at Wounded Knee? At Hiroshima? At Dresden?' JUSTICE IMMHOTEP: 'You become facetious, Mr. Celine.' MR. CELINE: 'I have never been more serious.
~ Robert Anton Wilson
In brief, once a government has n orders of secret police spying on each other, all are potentially suspect, and to be safe, a secret police of order n plus 1 must be created. And so on, forever.
~ Robert Anton Wilson
In practice, of course, this cannot regress to mathematical infinity, but only to the point where every citizen is spying on every other citizen or until the funding runs out.
~ Robert Anton Wilson
The more omnipresent the secret police, the more likely it is that intelligent men and women will regard the government with fear and loathing. The government, on discovering that growing numbers of citizens regard it with fear and loathing, will increase the size and powers of the secret police, to protect itself. The infinite regress again appears.
~ Robert Anton Wilson
Those who take a Dominant imprint in this system seek power all their lives; those with a Submissive imprint seek Dominant types to lead them (the Reichian Fuhrerprinzip) and most people settle somewhere between these extremes, taking a masochist stance toward those above them (government, landlords etc.) and a sadist stance toward selected victims defined as below them (wives, children, inferior races, people on Welfare, etc.).
~ Robert Anton Wilson
Ezra Pound had the peculiar distinction of winning an award from the Library of Congress for writing the best poem of the year, in 1948, while government psychiatrists insisted he was insane.)
~ Robert Anton Wilson
Against the paranoia that easily infests either Establishment dogma and anti-Establishment dogma, the only defense I see is agnosticism, well-flavored with a sense of humor, and an awareness of one's own fallibility. I suspect a great deal, but as long as Government Secrets exist, I am not sure of anything.
~ Robert Anton Wilson