Quotes About Government

Intelligence is impeded by any creed, no matter what, and kindness is inhibited by the belief in sin and punishment (this belief, by the way, is the only one that the Soviet Government has taken over from orthodox Christianity)

It is curious that Mill makes very little mention of the police as a danger to liberty. In our day they are its worst enemy...

A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible

One obvious palliative of the evils of democracy in its present form would be to encourage much more publicity and initiative on the part of civil servants. They ought to have the right, and, on occasion, the duty, to frame Bills in their own names, and set forth publicly the arguments in their favor.

Russell observes that the merits of democracy are negative: it does not ensure good government, but it prevents certain evils, such as the evil of a small group of individuals achieving a secure monopoly on political power. The chief peril for the politician, Russell insists, is love of power. And politicians can easily yield to the love of power on the pretense that they are pursuing some absolute good.

Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.

It is a curious fact that the more democratic a country becomes, the less respect it has for its rulers. Aristocracies and foreign conquerors may be hated but they are not despised.

The three things needed to prevent revolution are government propaganda in education, respect for law, even in small things, and justice in law and administration, i.e., "equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own" (1307a, 1307b, 1310a).

There was a very general development, first from monarchy to aristocracy, then to an alternation of tyranny and democracy.

The lunatic who believes he is a poached egg, is to be condemned solely on the ground that he is in a minority. Or rather, since we must not assume democracy, on the ground that the government disagrees with him.

Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.

In international affairs the same formula of federalism will apply: self-determination for every group in regard to matters which concern it much more vitally than they concern others, and government by a neutral authority embracing rival groups in all matters in which conflicting interests of groups come into play.

The Catholic Church was derived from three sources. Its sacred history was Jewish, its theology was Greek, its government and canon law were, at least indirectly, Roman. The Reformation rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek elements, and greatly strengthened the Judaic elements.

Every organisation, whatever its character and whatever its purpose, involves some redistribution of power. There must be a government, which takes decisions in the name of the whole body, and has more power than the single members have, at any rate as regards the purposes for which the organisation exists.

In national politics, where you are one of some twenty million voters, your influence is infinitesimal unless you are exceptional or occupy an exceptional position. You have, it is true, a twenty-millionth share in the government of others, but only a twenty-millionth share in the government of yourself. You are therefore much more conscious of being governed than of governing.

I come now to the question of forms of government, and it is natural to begin with absolute monarchy, as the oldest, simplest, and most widespread of the constitutions known in historical times.

Bolshevism is a close tyrannical bureaucracy, with a spy system more elaborate and terrible than the Tsar's, and an aristocracy as insolent and unfeeling, composed of Americanised Jews. No vestige of liberty remains, in thought or speech or action. I was stifled and oppressed by the weight of the machine as by a cope of lead. Yet I think it the right government for Russia at this moment. If you ask yourself how Dostoevsky's characters should be governed, you will understand. Yet it is terrible.

Power over opinion, like all other forms of power, tends to coalescence and concentration, leading logically to a State monopoly. But even apart from war it would be rash to assume that a State monopoly of propaganda must make a government invulnerable. In the long run, those who possess the power are likely to become too flagrantly indifferent to the interests of the common man, as the Popes were in the time of Luther.

We have seen that monarchy and oligarchy have both merits and demerits. The principal demerit of both is that, sooner or later, the government becomes so indifferent to the desires of ordinary men that there is revolution

A government is usually called 'democratic' if a fairly large percentage of the population has a share of political power. The most extreme Greek democracies excluded women and slaves, and America considered itself a democracy before women had the vote. Clearly an oligarchy approaches more nearly to a democracy as the percentage possessed of political power increases. The characteristic features of oligarchy only appear when this percentage is rather small.

Whenever there is acute danger, the impulse of most people is to seek out Authority and submit to it; at such moments, few would dream of revolution. When war breaks out, people have similar feelings towards the Government.

Love of independence is, in most cases, not an abstract dislike of external interference, but aversion from some one form of control which the government thinks desirable—prohibition, conscription, religious conformity, or what not. Sometimes such sentiments can be gradually overcome by propaganda and education, which can indefinitely weaken the desire for personal independence.

One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers.

This view was prevalent in Japan in the sixth century A.D., when Buddhism first reached that country. The Government, being in doubt as to the truth of the new religion, ordered one of the courtiers to adopt it experimentally; if he prospered more than the others, the religion was to be adopted universally. This is the method (with modifications to suit modern times) which the pragmatists advocate in regard to all religious controversies.