Quotes About Government

There has never been a mechanism, through something like a truth and reconciliation commission, for telling ourselves the truth about what we have done in a way that would broadly legitimate government policies to repair systemic discrimination across generations. Instead, we pine for national rituals of expiation that wash away our guilt without the need for an admission of guilt,

Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.

A Socialist State demands precisely the same human symbols as that of Fascist or Nazi, and the same surrender of human liberties if it is to succeed.

Governments should not possess instruments of coercion and violence denied to their citizens.

No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.

There is a place for government in the affairs of men, and our Declaration of Independence tells us precisely what that place is. The role of government is to protect individuals in their God-given individual rights. Freedom is the natural birthright of man, but all that government can do in behalf of freedom is to let the individual alone, and it should secure him in his rights by making others let him alone.

If it is the duty of the State to educate, it is the duty of the State also to bear the burden of education, namely, the taxation out of which education is provided.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.

In no country perhaps in the world is law so general a study [as in America]…. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense, full of resources…. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act—is founded on compromise and barter.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

It is the love of the [British] people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

Bad law is the worst sort of tyranny.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have right that these wants should be provided for, including the want of a sufficient restraint upon their passions.

The distinguishing part of our Constitution is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate seems the particular duty and proper trust of a member of the House of Commons. But the liberty, the only liberty, I mean is a liberty connected with order: that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.