Quotes About Government

Democratic, and most Republican, health-care plans don't call for expropriating the private property of doctors and pharmaceutical companies or even for the cessation of employer-provided health care. Rather, they want to use corporations for government by proxy.

Because there is something about tyranny, monarchy, and authoritarianism that "works," by which I mean there is something in our wiring that finds such systems natural.

have had trouble articulating what liberalism is, beyond the conviction that the federal government should use its power to do nice things wherever and whenever it can.

The American Revolution was a successful revolution precisely because it was grounded in both realism and idealism. Written deep into the structure of our Constitution is a profound comfort with contradiction. It sets faction against faction, pits each branch of government against the other, dilutes the excesses of democracy, and holds the executive accountable to the people. By being so grounded in realism, it can hold the weight of our ideals.

Despite the fact that the New Deal was a failure, it remains the gold standard in liberal policy making.

That's why liberals are constantly discovering new crises that require more government solutions.

The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good. And yet ever since the New Deal, liberals have been unable to shake this fundamental dogma that the state can be the instrument for a politics of meaning that transforms the entire nation into a village.

In America, where hostility to big government is central to the national character, the case for statism must be made in terms of "pragmatism" and decency. In other words, our fascism must be nice and for your own good.

e-mailing the right people on the wrong system. But from a public relations perspective, the technicalities didn't matter. Hillary had told the nation that she didn't traffic in classified information, and government investigators put the lie to that assertion day after day. In

Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat.

The only reason the House hasn't done even more damage is that the Senate often sands down the most noxious ideas, making the bills merely bad, not disastrous.

Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights or the Emancipation Proclamation, the Old Testament or the New Testament, do you find the words 'economy' or 'efficiency.' Not that these two words are unimportant. But you discover other words like honesty, integrity, fairness, liberty, justice, love.… Words which describe what a government of human beings ought to be.

The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.

A people are not made for rulers, but rulers for a people.

Government is necessary to defend communities from miseries from within themselves; from the prevalence of intestine discord, mutual injustice and violence; the members of the society continually making a prey one of another, without any defence one from another.

As government, and strong rods for the exercise of it, are necessary to preserve public societies from dreadful and fatal calamities arising from among themselves; so no less requisite are they to defend the community from foreign enemies. As they are like the pillars of a building, so they are also like the walls and bulwarks of a city: they are under God the main strength of a people in a time of war and the chief instruments of their preservation, safety and rest.

Almost all the prosperity of a public society and civil community does, under God, depend on their rulers. They are like the main springs or wheels in a machine that keep every part in their due motion, and are in the body politic, as in the vitals in the body natural, and as the pillars and the foundation in a building.

The genocide [in Rwanda] was not a spontaneous eruption of tribal hatred, it was planned by people wanting to keep power. There was a long government-led hat campaign against the Tutsis.

For example, do you agree that "the government should do more to advance the common good, even if that means limiting the freedom and choices of individuals"? If so, then you are probably a liberal. If not, then you could be either a libertarian or a conservative. The split between liberals (progressives) and libertarians (classical liberals) occurred over exactly this question more than a hundred years ago, and it shows up clearly in our data today.

sovereign power [or soft despot] extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules . . . it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America1

The only force left on Earth that can stand up to the largest corporations are national governments, some of which still maintain the power to tax, regulate, and divide corporations into smaller pieces when they get too powerful.

The sovereign power [or soft despot] extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules . . . it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America1

The taxes were supposed to be for the people. Now it's people for the taxes. Same with Social Security.

I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education.