Quotes About Government

Manipulation works so well on a personal level, I don't see why it wouldn't be an equally viable national policy." "That's actually how most rulership works," Ham mused. "What is a governement but an institutionalized method of making sure somebody else does all the work?

What is a government but an institutionalized method of making sure somebody else does all the work?

We really have to do something about you ambivalence toward civic duty, kid." "I already overthrew one government," Vin said. "I figure that takes care of my 'civic duty' for a while.

The law is not something holy, son. It's just a reflection of the ideals of those lucky enough to be in charge.

War is the last option of the state that has failed

Wasing the where of needing," she read, forming the unfamiliar words. The lofty tongue was used for old documents dating to the time of the Origin, and occasionally for government ceremony.

We are propping up a government that has overreached its bounds in the name of public safety," FM said. "The people must speak up and rise against the upper class who holds them enslaved!

She liked to consider herself a part of Elendel upper society, and she kind of was. In the same way that the blocks of granite that made up the steps to the governor's mansion were a part of civic government.

What would it be like if every nation—from the isles in the South to the Terris hills in the North—were united under a single government? What wonders could be achieved, what progress could be made, if mankind were to permanently set aside its squabblings and join together? It is too much, I suppose, to even hope for. A single, unified empire of man? It could never happen.

Manipulation works so well on a personal level, I don't see why it wouldn't be an equally viable national policy.

That's the way of most rulership," Ham mused. "What is a government but an institutionalized method of making sure somebody else does all the work?

It was wise to put bureaucrats in windowless offices.

if we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well. And I end by challenging people to ask themselves whether we can continue to allow the government, subject as it is to every imaginable form of inefficiency and corruption, to have such power to kill. (p. 130)

The death penalty costs too much. Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons. (p. 197)

If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well.

Its main responsibility is health spending, but it oversees a lot of other things as well. Education, culture, and so on.

While Ross and Cockburn were hastily burning the White House and Department buildings, anxious only to escape, and never sending more than two hundred soldiers beyond Capitol Square, the President, his Cabinet, his generals, and his army were performing movements at which even the American people, though outraged and exasperated beyond endurance, could not but laugh.

Washington was no politician as we understand the word, replied Ratcliffe abruptly. He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done today. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.

With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens,—a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

I heartily accept the motto, That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual, without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.