Quotes About Government

In all her history, from the formation of the federal government until the hour of secession, no year stands out more prominently than the year 1858 as evidencing the national patriotism of Virginia.

You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.'

We are told that this is an odious and unpopular tax. I never knew a tax that was not odious and unpopular with the people who paid it.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

When we were scared about 9/11, we federalized the airport security, we spent millions for body armor for dogs in Ohio. All that over-reaction comes from fear and government - bad combination.

Even as life gets safer, longer, and richer, people clamor for new regulations every time a child falls down a well.

It's not about electing the right people. It's about a narrowing their responsibilities.

When America began, government cost every citizen $20 (in [2003] money) per year. Taxes rose during wars, but for most of the life of America, spending never exceeded a few hundred dollars per person. During World War II, government got much bigger. It was supposed to shrink again after the war but never did. Instead, it just kept growing. Now the federal government costs every man, woman, and child an average of $10,000 per year.

The smaller the government, the less the need to manipulate politicians.

whenever there are problems, people turn to government. Despite the central planners' long record of failure, politicians promise that this time they will "fix" health care, education, the uncertainty of old age, etc., and people believe.

When government decides to set "standards" for an industry, to whom will it turn for expertise? Brilliant newcomers? No, government doesn't even know who they are. The older, lazier, bigger, arthritic businesses suggest the rules and make sure that their way is the only legal way.

Good government has to mean less government.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

The strongest of all arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place.

Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness, and great affection under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile, laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad.

Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aim, at becoming the government.

The aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.

How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely what should be said to every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong.

Not even on the most distorted and contracted theory of good which ever was framed by religious or philosophical fanaticism, can the government of Nature be made to resemble the work of a being at once good and omnipotent.

What the State can usefully do is to make itself a central depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others, instead of tolerating no experiments but its own.

Governments must be made for human beings as they are, or as they are capable of speedily becoming.

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.