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Quotes about government

575 quotes from 235 people

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In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790
Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Poor Richard’s Almanack
- Laws
That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved; never, that I know of, controverted.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Letter to Benjamin Vaughan, on Blackstone’s Ratio (14 March 1785)
- Justice
- Laws
If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.
Milton Friedman1912–2006America’s Drug Forum interview (1991)
- Economics
In this day and age, we need to revise the old saying to read, “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”
Milton Friedman1912–2006“Bureaucracy Scorned” in Newsweek (29 December 1975), later published in Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist’s Protest (1983)
- Comedy
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.
Milton Friedman1912–2006“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)
The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual.
Milton Friedman1912–2006America’s Drug Forum interview (1991)
It’s a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don’t approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else.
Milton Friedman1912–2006America’s Drug Forum interview (1991)
- Morality
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
Milton Friedman1912–2006Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)
- Politics
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Robert Frost1874–1963
- Laws
In situations of de facto diversity, attempts to impose a single way of life on an entire population is a formula for dictatorship.
Francis Fukuyamaborn 1952Liberalism and its Discontents (2020)
- Politics
The most tyrannical dictatorships the world has known have existed under the aegis of parliaments.
Muammar Gaddafi1942–2011The Green Book (1975)
- Democracy
Civilization is the encouragement of differences. Civilization thus becomes a synonym of democracy. Force, violence, pressure, or compulsion with a view to conformity, is both uncivilized and undemocratic.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948
- Democracy
The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948From Discussion with BG Kher and others, 15 August 1940. Gandhi’s Wisdom Box (1942), edited by Dewan Ram Parkash, p. 67 also in Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 79 (PDF), p. 122