Quotes About Government

Any instruction which convince people that religious belief alone, without morality, suffices to satisfy God's justice is destructive of all government and is far more harmful than is ingenious and subtle. Men's practices reveal an extraordinary distinction between devotion and sense of right and wrong.

The first task of the doctor is ... political: the struggle against disease must begin with a war against bad government. Man will be totally and definitively cured only if he is first liberated...

the intense Catholic renaissance during the Counter-Reformation produced in France a very particular character of simultaneous competition and complicity between the government and the Church.

in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice

John Perry Barlow, poet and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, once said, "Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.

After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say "Russia!" to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, "How much?" We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.

Otro problema surge cuando interviene el gobierno. John Perry Barlow, poeta y letrista de Grateful Dead, afirma: «Pedirle al gobierno que proteja nuestra privacidad es como pedirle a un voyeur que nos instale unas persianas

A Commie. She was a jerky Red. She owned all the trimmings and she was still a Red. What the hell was she hoping for, a government order to share it all with the masses? Yeah. A joint like this would suddenly assume a new owner under a new regime. A fat little general, a ranking secret policeman, somebody. Sure, it's great to be a Commie . . . as long as you're top dog. Who the hell was supposed to be fooled by all the crap?

Some kind of worship of the state, as though the state was somehow different from the schmucks who run it. Can't say I'm keen.

She fell back on the blandest of questions a politician's daughter knew. "So, do you like what your legislator is doing? You plan to vote for him next election?

It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground, he said, than to send petitions to a president.

You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.

Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels. [Reply to the government bureaucrat of one Asian country who told him that, reason why there were workers with shovels instead of modern tractors and earth movers at a worksite of a new canal, was that: You don't understand. This is a jobs program.]

A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the rule of the game and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves

There is still a tendency to regard any existing government intervention as desirable, to attribute all evils to the market, and to evaluate new proposals for government control in their ideal form, as they might work if run by able, disinterested men free from the pressure of special interest groups.

We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas.

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.

Inflation is taxation without representation.

Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation.