c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
As the American Patriots imagined it, a federal relationship would be a kind of confession of first principles or covenant that would allow states to bind themselves together substantially without entirely subsuming their sundry identities. The federal nature of the American Constitutional covenant would enable the nation to function as a republic – thus specifically avoiding the dangers of a pure democracy. Republics exercise governmental authority through mediating representatives under the rule of law. Pure democracies on the other hand exercise governmental authority through the imposition of the will of the majority without regard for the concerns of any minority – thus allowing law to be subject to the whims, fashions, and fancies of men. The Founders designed federal system of the United States so that the nation could be, as John Adams described it, a “government of law, not of men.” The Founders thus expressly and explicitly rejected the idea of a pure democracy, just as surely as totalitarian monarchy, because as James Madison declared “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.” The rule of the majority does not always respect the rule of law, and is as turbulent as the caprices of political correctness or dictatorial autonomy. Indeed, history has proven all too often that democracy is particularly susceptible to the urges and impulses of mobocracy.
— George Grant, The Magdeburg Confession: 13th of April 1550 AD
Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us?
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Living in a democratic society means that I can express my opinion,Having a democratic government means that they don't have to listen.
— Anthony Hincks
Every nation needs more people who love liberty, fear mob rule, and hate tyranny with the consistent logic and passion of Alexis de Tocqueville. He is still quoted by presidential candidates, but too often he’s ignored by presidents, and therein lies the danger. Tocqueville reads beautifully but governs even better.
— John Mark Reynolds, The Great Books Reader: Excerpts and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization
Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.
— Charles Bukowski, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.
— Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
A free and prosperous society has no fear of anyone entering it. But a welfare state is scared to death of every poor person who tries to get in and every rich person who tries to get out.
— Harry Browne
That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)
— Thomas Jefferson
We've got this weird dysgenic situation where we're basically just paying idiots to breed and taxing intelligent people to stay away from each other with anything remotely resembling fertility.
— Stefan Molyneux
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. Dom Helder Camara – one of the great prophets of Christian "Liberation theology".
— Dom Helder Camara Archbishop of Recife in Brazil
The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life – the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.
— Hubert H. Humphrey
The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense...When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
— Frédéric Bastiat
An "attack on SeaWorld" might mean a bomb, or it might mean graffiti and glitter and a cream pie in the face. The government doesn't always seem to distinguish between the two.
— Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
— Eric Hoffer
One glance at any government budget anywhere in the world tells the story—the money is always in place, already allocated, the motive everywhere is fear, the more immediate the fear, the higher the multiples.
— Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day
As mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
— President George Washington
The shadow that comes with postmodernism is a profound self-involvement. We lose all perspective on the collective endeavors that have made the extraordinarily lives we live possible.
— James M. Fallows
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, intact for over 200 years, guaranteed that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. After September 11th, 2001, those were just words on an old piece of paper, no longer a restriction of the Government’s overreaching power to shake down its subjects.
— Kenneth Eade, A Patriot's Act
It is be­cause freedom means the renun­ciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
I cannot live to hear the news from England.But I do prophesy th' election lightsOn Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.So tell him, with th' occurents, more and less,Which have solicited - the rest is silence.
— William Shakespeare
The Bill of Rights wasn’t enacted to give us any rights. It was enacted so the Government could not take away from us any rights that we already had.
— Kenneth Eade, A Patriot's Act
Many such an official, upon winning a foothold in City Hall, thinks only of his own cohorts, and his own gain. So it is not surprising that public affairs grow stagnant. Truly, cannot fathom such minds! I can think of nothing so satisfying as doing public good in as many ways as an official can. Think, for an instant, as to just what a city is. As I said long ago, it is not an array of buildings, parks and fountains. No. A city is a living thing! It is, actually, human;for it is a group of humanity growing up in daily contact; and if officials adopt as a slogan, “all I can do,” and not “all I can grab,” only its suburban boundary can limit its growth.
— Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby
[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.
— Lawrence Lessig
There could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that by the mercy of God they who are endowed with true piety of life if they have the skill for ruling people should also have the power.
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God
Poverty can be brought about by law
—  it cannot be forbidden by law.
The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.
— Isabel Paterson
[D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom."-William F Buckley
— William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. &It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.
— Aristotle
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
— Albert Camus
Ever wonder why the media never refers to 18 or 19 year old American soldiers as "armed teens"?
— Stefan Molyneux
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul....I was wrong to follow the meanness of Conservatism. I should have been trying to help people instead of taking advantage of them. I don't hate anyone anymore. For the first time in my life I don't hate somebody. I have nothing but good feelings toward people. I've found Jesus Christ – It's that simple. He's made a difference. (Reagan's campaign manager "death-bed confession" in Feb. 1991 article for Life Magazine )
— Lee Atwater
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
— Aristotle
The government system we have now is set up just like that of Rome and is changing into a system I call Corpocracism (Babylon, United States). Corpocracism is a word derived from some entities of feudalism, democracy, capitalism, classism, and corporatism to form a government system into a dictatorship and police state. This system is being brought about by a group of people in our own government, corporations, financial institutions and foreign entities. It is an ideology of hypocrisy that is leading to an JerUSAlem (America) that will sale off every aspect of its nations people to be captive to foreign entities such as corporations, governments, lawyers, financial institutions, banks, individuals and groups of individuals.
— Brian David Mattson, JerUSAlem and the Blood of Jesus
America is a nation of illusions; illusions in the media, schools and government — an iron curtain of propaganda.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
In his 1907 retirement address, Joseph Pulitzer urged his successors to always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.
— Joseph Pulitzer
In his book Politics, which is the foundation of the study of political systems, and very interesting, Aristotle talked mainly about Athens. But he studied various political systems - oligarchy, monarchy - and didn't like any of the particularly. He said democracy is probably the best system, but it has problems, and he was concerned with the problems. One problem that he was concerned with is quite striking because it runs right up to the present. He pointed out that in a democracy, if the people - people didn't mean people, it meant freemen, not slaves, not women - had the right to vote, the poor would be the majority, and they would use their voting power to take away property from the rich, which wouldn't be fair, so we have to prevent this.James Madison made the same pint, but his model was England. He said if freemen had democracy, then the poor farmers would insist on taking property from the rich. They would carry out what we these days call land reform. and that's unacceptable. Aristotle and Madison faced the same problem but made the opposite decisions. Aristotle concluded that we should reduce ineqality so the poor wouldn't take property from the rich. And he actually propsed a visin for a city that would put in pace what we today call welfare-state programs, common meals, other support systems. That would reduce inequality, and with it the problem of the poor taking property from the rich. Madison's decision was the opposite. We should reduce democracy so the poor won't be able to get together to do this.If you look at the design of the U.S. constitutional system, it followed Madison's approach. The Madisonian system placed power in the hands of the Senate. The executive in those days was more or less an administrator, not like today. The Senate consisted of "the wealth of the nation," those who had sympathy for property owners and their rights. That's where power should be. The Senate, remember, wasn't elected. It was picked by legislatures, who were themselves very much subject to control by the rich and the powerful. The House, which was closer to the population, had much less power. And there were all sorts of devices to keep people from participation too much - voting restrictions and property restrictions. The idea was to prevent the threat of democracy. This goal continues right to the present. It has taken different forms, but the aim remains the same.
— Noam Chomsky, Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire
No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.
— Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Time
A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
— Leonard Bernstein, Thinking and Writing in College
…it is the public sector I find more interesting, because governments and other non-market institutions have long suffered from the innovation malaise of top-heavy bureaucracies. Today, these institutions have an opportunity to fundamentally alter the way they cultivate and promote good ideas. The more the government thinks of itself as an open platform instead of a centralized bureaucracy, the better it will be for all of us, citizens and activists, and entrepreneurs alike.
— Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Too many young Indigenous members of our community are being caught up in the criminal justice system, with an increasing number of cases resulting in notably unjust and undue outcomes, primarily due to the lack of resources available
— Abdullah Reslan Lawyer
Maintaining a fair and accessible justice system should at all times be the overarching concern of Government
— Abdullah Reslan
Every culture has its distinctive and normal system of government. Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism, moderated by assassination.
— Unknown Russian
He concluded that governments were like wars: the reasons and the forces might change, but it was still the same dying over the same soil.
— Nick Harkaway, Tigerman
But there's nothing wrong with being scared. I think everyone's a little scared. Even the government.
— David Patneaude, Someone Was Watching
The mass hallucination of the twentieth century is this: that all these national governments, which each year kill or threaten way more humans than they protect, and take a big chunk of your income to do so, are for some reason a great idea, an inevitable force of fucking nature.
— Tyler Mcmahon, How the Mistakes Were Made
Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.
— Murray N. Rothbard
A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime; whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, or by millions calling themselves a government.
— Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
Private property is redundant. "Public property" is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn't private it's stolen.
— Gustave de Molinari
You cannot have an agency that defends your property, which also has the right to violate your property rights at will. That's like hiring a bodyguard that you pay to beat you up randomly.
— Stefan Molyneux
There's a whole generation growing up thinking...the government exists to care for them.
— Dave Ramsey
In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force
— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.
— Albert Jay Nock
Tyranny is the wolf cast by the shadows of sheep.
— Stefan Molyneux
The libertarian philosophy doesn't explain the best way to grow a vegetable garden!" Why do some people talk as if there should be one concept or principle which is all you'll ever need to know in order to handle everything in life? Right now the PRIMARY threat to humanity--by a factor of a zillion--is the belief in "authority." And the solution--the ONLY solution--is for people to escape that superstition. Questions like, "But how do we care for the poor?" are 100% logically IRRELEVANT to proving that statism is immoral and destructive. "But gee, if I stop sawing off my toes with this steak knife, how will I balance my checkbook?" Why the hell do people imagine that anarchists have some obligation to explain how every aspect of everyone's life will work, just because they say, "Having a ruling class is immoral and irrational"? When someone tells you to stop advocating evil crap (e.g., statism), they don't suddenly acquire an obligation to explain the whole universe to you, or to guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to anyone ever again.
— - Larken Rose
July 4, the day we celebrate giving our political masters independence from conscience, morality, consequences for evil doing, and basic social and economic reality.The fireworks are the glowing tears of your children's incinerated futures.Cheer happy slaves - your only chains are your deluded joys. Cheer and sing, because for you, songs of death are easier than questions of life.
— Stefan Molyneux
That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Statism is an unnatural disaster.
— Stefan Molyneux
Rights" are something made up by governments to make you feel like you're buying something with your taxes.
— Stefan Molyneux
The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.
— Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos
A nanny state is hostile to liberty. Any attempt to institute or continue it should be opposed, root and branch. Government intervention is never the solution; it is always part of the problem.
— Laurence M. Vance
History is the same story with different costumes.
— Stefan Molyneux
The government is not your salvation. The government is not your road to prosperity. Hard work, education will take you far beyond what any government program can ever promise.
— Mia Love
We shall learn the qualities of governments in the same way as we learn the qualities of individuals, since they are revealed in their deliberate acts of choice; and these are determined by the end that inspires them.
— Aristotle, The Rhetoric & The Poetics of Aristotle
Under the attempt to perform the impossible there sets in a general disintegration. When legislation fails, those who look upon it as a sovereign remedy simply cry out for more legislation.A sound and wise statesmanship which recognizes and attempts to abide by its limitations will undoubtedly find itself displaced by that type of public official who promises much, talks much, legislates much, expends much, but accomplishes little.The deliberate, sound judgement of the country is likely to find it has been superseded by a popular whim.
— Calvin Coolidge, The Price of Freedom
When individuals combine in a joint effort to realize ends the have in common, the organizations, like the state, that they form for this purpose are given their own system of ends and their own means. But any organization thus formed remains one "person" among other, in the case of the state much more powerful than any of the others, it is true, yet still with its separate and limited sphere in which alone its ends are supreme.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
Conscious evolution of the free enterprise system happens when we realize that neither the heavy handedness of government nor the greed of unregulated enterprise holds the answer to prosperity. It is the radical introspection of both sides leading to a conscious evolution that will save this system we call capitalism.
— Said Elias Dawlabani, MEMEnomics: The Next-Generation Economic System
To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.
— Henry Hazlitt
A government that kills its own citizens is like a parent that kills their own kids aka filicide or like a mother that kills her unborn by abortion .
— Youns Hussein
The Government's going to pass a bill regarding schools. Well I never. Interfering gang they are, as if a parent doesn't know what's best for her own child. I don't know, I don't know! We won't be able to call our children our own just now.
— James Hanley, Boy
A young, beautiful mayor’s with high-powered plans for the city of Compton must put them aside to become a sleuth to solve the assassination of her husband, the mayor.
— Martha Tucker, The Mayor's Wife Wore Sapphires
If you wanted to bestow the grandiose title of "most successful organization in modern history," you would struggle to find a more obviously worthy nominee than the federal government of the United States.In its earliest stirrings, it established a lasting and influential democracy. Since then, it has helped defeat totalitarianism (more than once), established the world’s currency of choice, sent men to the moon, built the Internet, nurtured the world’s largest economy, financed medical research that saved millions of lives and welcomed eager immigrants from around the world.
— David Leonhardt
People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.
— Megan Abbott, Dare Me
Someone asked me the other day if I believe in conspiracies. Well, sure. Here's one. It is called the political system. It is nothing if not a giant conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population.
— Jeffrey Tucker
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.
— Thomas Sowell
I was right outside the NSA [on 9/11], so I remember the tension on that day. I remember hearing on the radio, 'the plane's hitting,' and I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it...I take the threat of terrorism seriously, and I think we all do. And I think it's really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort-of scandalize our memories to sort-of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through -- and to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up, and that our Constitution says we should not give up.
— Edward Snowden
Liberty is not about class war, income war, race war, national war, a war between the sexes, or any other conflict apart from the core conflict between individuals and those who would seek power and control over the human spirit. Liberty is the dream that we can all work together, in ways of our choosing and of our own human volition, to realize a better life.
— Jeffrey Tucker
The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
— Ludwig von Mises
Keeping a monopoly on legitimate violence is still the proven best way to limit violence and allow reason some asylum where it can be freely practiced.
— Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation
In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA's MKULTRA programme, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities, new memories, and responses to hypnotic access codes. In 1972, then-CIA director Richard Helms and Gottlieb ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. A clerical error spared seven boxes, containing 1738 documents, over 17,000 pages. This archive was declassified through a Freedom of Information Act Request in 1977, though the names of most people, universities, and hospitals are redacted. The CIA assigned each document a number preceded by "MORI", for "Managament of Officially Released Information", the CIA's automated electronic system at the time of document release. These documents, to be referenced throughout this chapter, are accessible on the Internet (see: abuse-of-power (dot) org/modules/content/index.php?id=31). The United States Senate held a hearing exposing the abuses of MKULTRA, entitled "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's program of research into behavioral modification" (1977).
— Orit Badouk Epstein, Ritual Abuse and Mind Control: The Manipulation of Attachment Needs
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.
— P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
When the vision of the U.S. government included guarding the rights of people but staying out of their way, America was an economic engine more powerful than anything the world had ever witnessed.
— Ben Carson, One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future
If any of the socialist chiefs had tried to earn his living by selling hot dogs, he would have learned something about the sovereignty of the consumers.
— Ludwig von Mises
No one wants their stuff stolen. No one wants their physical person harmed. If you understand the implications of those two truths, you can come to see the egregious moral and practical problems of a state-managed society.
— Jeffrey Tucker
That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Don't let a corrupt Media and Criminal Government continue to Brainwash You. THINK FOR YOURSELVES JAMAICANS WHILE YOU STILL CAN!
— Alecia Thompson
for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
In the USA, the “corporament” exists as the: military (defense/offense) + industrial + academic (schooling – at all levels – as prison) + “corporament” entertainment (Hollywood, media, advertising/consumerism/commercialization, propaganda/psychological warfare) + judicial (defense and prosecutorial lawyers, judges, law enforcement/police, prisons) + financial (banks, accounting firms) + religion + petrochemical/pharmaceutical (drugs, antibiotics, antibacterials, vaccines, pesticides – toxins to kill or put you at “dis-ease” and drugs to “treat” you) + imperial commu-soci-capitofasdemocracism system/society/economy/Western thinking = Military-industrial-academic-“corporament” entertainment-judicial-financial-religion-petrochemical/pharmaceutical complex.
— Irucka Ajani Embry, Balancing the Rift: Reconnectualizing the Pasenture
Perhaps no skeptic has done more to obfuscate the issue of ritual abuse than Kenneth Lanning of the FBI, who for years has maintained that no substantive evidence exists for the reality of ritual abuse (Lanning, 1991). (As investigative journalist Civia Tamarkin has noted, for decades the FBI also told the American public that the Mafia did not exist in the United States (1991)). “No bodies…No adult witnesses,” as Parenting magazine put it so succinctly, and so erroneously in their March 1994 article “The Satanism Scare” (Ruben, 1994). And why do accounts like the ones given by the 37 ritually abused adults in the Young et al. (1991) study, and the 14 ritually abused families in the Kelly (1992a) study, of group sexual assaults, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism and the like not constitute eyewitness accounts to so-called experts like Lanning?"from Denying Ritual Abuse of ChildrenThe Journal of Psychohistory 22 (3) 1995
— Catherine Gould
One of the great beauties of politics as an art form was its lack of restriction to merely standard forms of realism.
— Bruce Sterling, Distraction
My Son, Only Tax and Death are for sure.
— Csaba Gabor-B.
The UFOs were explicable enough, just experimental aircrafts from the airport. Of course the government was not going to tell people what was actually going on. She would not be surprised if the government encouraged the UFO cultists to flock there as the perfect cover, since no one would ever believe them.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Artificial Gods
A healthy agency does not require relevance to the national agenda so much as the APPEARANCE of relevance to the national agenda," Humphrey explained. "It is perhaps the second-most important tool in ensuring continued funding.""And the most important?""A friend on the Appropriations committee.
— Jim Geraghty, The Weed Agency: A Comic Tale of Federal Bureaucracy Without Limits
Religion is the most fragile of all freedoms. And that’s because it is the most threatening to those in power.
— Eric Metaxas
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.
— John Lennon
I believe, therefore, that although it is not the case today, that there may some day come a time, I should hope, when it will fully appreciated that the power of governments should be limited; that governments ought not to be empowered to decide the validity of scientific theories, that this is a ridiculous thing for them to try to do; that they are not to decide the description of history or of economic theory or of philosophy.
— Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
You are constantly being trained to be heroic only in the service of your masters - only in slaughter and sacrifice and subjugation. But there is no heroism in serving your masters. Real heroism is questioning why you have masters at all.All these stories, all these fantasies, all these superpowers - are designed to steal heroism from you, to make it impossible, fantastical, remote, and unachievable - and make you useful to your masters (as a hit man, if needed). What is the opposite of this?The opposite of fantasy is philosophy. The opposite of mythology is integrity. And integrity is truth in action.
— Stefan Molyneux
No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
— Mark Twain, The Gilded Age
I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, government negatively by restraining our vices. Society encourages intercourse. Government creates distinctions.
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense
If no divine law is recognized above the law of the State, then the law of man has become absolute in men's eyes--there is then no logical barrier to totalitarianism.
— Greg L. Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today
Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
— Frédéric Bastiat
In monarchies, each man's desire to do what was right in his own eyes could be restrained by beer, or force, by patronage, or by honor, and by professional standing armies. By contrast, republics had to hold themselves together from the bottom up, ultimately.
— Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815
All you need is the will and the skill
— Stewart Liff, Managing Government Employees: How to Motivate Your People, Deal with Difficult Issues, and Achieve Tangible Results
No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.
— Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
No, this is pretty much the same version I read," I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I imagine that from time to time some similar situation has led governments to declare war." pg.57
— Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird
Mr. de Pinto, the dog who protects sheep quickly learns how to direct them, and it becomes a habit. The people have been trained by their 'watchmen' to jump, and to trample what the 'watchmen' want trampled."I have found, that those who would guard the people are their governors. The government admits that it is a government. The press pretends that it is not. But what a pretense! You orchestrate entire populations. And who elected you? No one. You are self-appointed, you speak for no one, and therefore you have no right to question me as if you represent the common good.
— Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
I must admit that I feel that the best form of government is benevolent despotism.
— Jeff Grubb
Always remember: When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
— Alexander Hamilton
Historical definition of a country's borders... "...here's where my murder geography ends and your murder geography begins, at least until I get more murderers to expand my murder-fest.
— Stefan Molyneux
So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won’t be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice and predictability, and the U.S. government, as much as Americans like to grumble about it, does a pretty good job of meeting all three standards. Pg. 293
— Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Prayer is the most tangible expression of trust in God. If we would trust God for our persecuted brothers and sisters in other countries, we must be diligent in prayer for their rulers. If we would trust God when decisions of government in our own country go against our best interests, we must pray for His working in the hearts of those officials and legislators who make those decisions. The truth that the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord is meant to be a stimulus to prayer, not a stimulus to a fatalistic attitude.
— Jerry Bridges, Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their consciences!
— Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan. A Classic Essay on Samurai Ethics
I cannot bring myself to judge those who are defending their lands against an immoral violent foreign invader. The fact that the immoral violent foreign invader happens to be the U.S. government does not alter my view.
— Dave Champion
As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.
— Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice
nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character.
— Winston S. Churchill
Because of the power that we have given money: The government would rather have taxpayers who do not vote, than voters who do not pay tax.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Governments can do both great and stupid things.
— Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers
We live in a time when to reject the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful government is to be viewed by that government as being anti-government.
— Dave Champion
It seemed to me then - and to be honest, sir, seems to me still - that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away. Such an America had to be stopped in the interests not only of the rest of humanity, but also in your own.
— Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
I always said a good despotism was the best form of government
—  and I am twice as much in favour of it now I see what a quorum is!
My politics is my religion, my religion is my politics.
— Mahatma Gandhi, Selected Political Writings
There is also a trilogy of books out. I started reading right after Christmas Divergent. I went to read Insurgent after, and now I’m on the third one. I don’t know, it’s Detergent or whatever. But it’s written by a 26-year-old girl. It’s brilliant. But I’m about halfway through now on book number three. Wait until you get to book number three. Hello, Google genome project.Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and yet, morality and ethics are afterthoughts. We’re excited about discovery and advancement, you know? We’re in fact so excited that we don’t even take the time to discuss or debate the moral dilemmas and implications of new technology. Sure, we’re still in control of technology now, but does there come a time when we’re not? Who will be the one that says turn it off? When do things go wrong?I don’t see anyone at Google or in the government or anyone at the forefront of technology boom that is contemplating the ethics and morality issues. Now that is a truly scary thought that doesn’t come in a movie.
— Glenn Beck
Good government has to mean less government.
— John Stossel No They can t
Across organizations in services, manufacturing, healthcare and government, eighty percent of an organization’s improvement potential lies in front-line ideas.
— Alan G. Robinson, The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas
The smaller the government, the less the need to manipulate politicians.
— John Stossel No They can t
But if government is in the business of promoting what is good and suppressing the bad, that is a license for it to stick it’s nose into virtually every human activity.
— John Stossel No They can t Pg 32 Threshold Editions New York New York 2012
One would think that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the intellectual poverty of technocracy and the primacy of politics over it would be a well-established truth in need of no further defense.
— Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
For if the car drives in the wrong direction better fuel doesn't help.
— Janusz Korwin-Mikke
Why do people look to the government to fix the economy? It's mind-boggling.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
Let the warning of the tyrants of the past be recognized for it shall be the same one ringing out when the tyrants of the present are unleashed.
— Sai Marie Johnson
Part of what psychedelics do is they decondition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato. Since all culture is a kind of con game, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is one which causes people to start questioning the rules of the game.
— Terence McKenna
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
— H.L. Mencken
From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting the petty tyranny of distrustful vengeance. In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches. The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis.In our own times, the old blunt instruments have again been put to work. The States have followed in the footsteps of the Federalists and have put Alien and Sedition Acts upon their statute books. An epidemic of loyalty oaths has spread across the Nation until no town or village seems to feel secure until its servants have purged themselves of all suspicion of non-conformity by swearing to their political cleanliness.Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution.We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. The legislative investigation, designed and often exercised for the achievement of high ends, has too frequently been used by the Nation and the States as a means for effecting the disgrace and degradation of private persons. Unscrupulous demagogues have used the power to investigate as tyrants of an earlier day used the bill of attainder.The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime. Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify "togetherness" when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others.In listing these abuses I do not mean to condemn our central effort to protect the Nation's security. The dangers that surround us have been very great, and many of our measures of vigilance have ample justification. Yet there are few among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards excess of caution.
— John F. Kennedy
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
— Charles Péguy
They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy-just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.
— Wilbur Smith, The Leopard Hunts in Darkness
Because the state uses violence to achieve its ends, and there is no rational end to the use of violence, states grow until they destroy civilized interactions through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family and self-reliance.No state in history has ever been contained.It’s only taken a little more than a century for the US – founded on the idea of limited government, to break the bonds of the constitution, institute the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system and begin its catastrophic expansion.
— Stefan Molyneux
The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism - which foretells a coming change.As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.
— Stefan Molyneux
The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.(A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)
— Thomas Jefferson, Writings: Autobiography/Notes on the State of Virginia/Public & Private Papers/Addresses/Letters
The government (or humanity) would not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time.
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.
— Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State
It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does.
— Eric Robert Morse, Juggernaut: Why The System Crushes The Only People Who Can Save It