Quotes About Government

Traditionally people are on the side of the government all the time.

Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of adding the vast regions of Louisiana, to the already immense, and but half-tenanted territories of the United-States.

To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.

By the time the civil service has finished drafting a document to give effect to the principle, there may be little of the principle left.

Wherever Law Ends, Tyranny Begins"—John Locke.

PUTIN: "No civilized state can live without a legislative institution. A great deal depends on the Duma. We expect efficient, systematic work." ALEXANDER

This form of soft dictatorship does not require mass violence to stay in power. Instead, it relies upon a cadre of elites to run the bureaucracy, the state media, the courts, and, in some places, state companies.

The budget deficit for 1932, expected to be around twenty million pounds, would in fact be nearer one hundred seventy million pounds.

Jesus was soft on crime. He'd never have been elected anything.

Here we are, older, scared, numb on some days, enraged on others, with even less trust than we had a year ago. The devastating pandemic, and the federal government's confused and deadly response, was simply the final straw to a few years of crushing developments.

It's just free speech, that's all we've got. We can say whatever we like, then the government goes and does exactly what it pleases. You call that democracy? It's like we're on a ship, headed someplace terrible, and somebody else is steering and the passengers can't jump off.

No self-respecting free city would allow politicians to weigh in on refugee issues.

Civilians, not insurgents, were the principal victims of this war; the poor who lived in rural areas were especially hard hit. Little attempt was made by the government to address the structural injustice that was the cause of the conflict. What reforms they attempted were secondary to the massive repression of the people.

Everyone—including people who vehemently oppose any form of federal government—depend on a sprawling supply chain that can only function with federal oversight, and most of them pay roughly one-third of their income in taxes for the right to participate in this system.

Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long.

the air raids failed to trigger the kind of mass hysteria that government officials had predicted.

I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I've done it so many times. First there is a kind of shock at the level of comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about—depending on their views—the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president, or the entire US government.

Anyone who wants to overthrow an established power--a government, an army, or even a dominant corporation--must, first and foremost, believe they are fulfilling a kind of historic destiny.

Democracy, Ganapathi, is perhaps the most arrogant of all forms of government, because only democrats presume to represent an entire people: monarchs and oligarchs have no such pretensions. But democracies that turn authoritarian go a step beyond arrogance; they claim to represent a people subjugating themselves. India was now the laboratory of this strange political experiment. Our people would be the first in the world to vote on their own subjugation.

we cannot blame the British for saddling us with this system, though it is their 'Mother of Parliaments' our forefathers sought to emulate. First of all, the British had no intention of imparting democracy to Indians; second, Indians freely chose the parliamentary system themselves in a Constituent Assembly.

the foremost Indian research institution under the British empire, the Indian Institute of Science, was endowed by the legendary Jamsetji Tata, not by any British philanthropist, let alone by the colonial government.

The highest officers in the government had the strongest motives to corruption, and therefore could by no possibility attempt to check the same corruption in those below them…

The British tended to base their refusal to intervene in famines with adequate governmental measures on a combination of three sets of considerations: free trade principles (do not interfere with market forces), Malthusian doctrine (growth in population beyond the ability of the land to sustain it would inevitably lead to deaths, thereby restoring the 'correct' level of population) and financial prudence (don't spend money we haven't budgeted for).

Historian John Keay put it best: 'The conduct of states, as of individuals, can only be assessed by the standards of their age, not by today's litigious criteria. Otherwise, we'd all be down on the government of Italy for feeding Christians to the lions.