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Quotes about government

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One who liberates his country by killing a tyrant is to be praised and rewarded.
Thomas Aquinas1225–1274Trans. J.G. Dawson (Oxford, 1959), 44, 2 in O’Donovan, pp. 329-30
When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.
Sydney Smith1771–1845Peter Plymley’s Letters (1808), Letter IV
- Clever Jabs
- Laws
That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.1841–1935Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919), 250 U.S. 616; 630.
- Laws
We’d all like t’vote fer th’best man, but he’s never a candidate.
Kin Hubbard1868–1930The Best of Kin Hubbard (1984)
- Voting
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
James A. Garfield1831–1881Letter to B. A. Hinsdale, (21 April 1880), in The Nation’s Hero — In Memoriam : The Life of James Abram Garfield (1881) by J. M. Bundy, p. 216
Let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote.
Warren G. Harding1865–1923Speech at Birmingham, Alabama, published in the Birmingham Post (27 October 1921) quoted in Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 (1977) by Carl V. Harris (1977) University of Tennessee Press, .
- Race
- Voting
Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.
Charles Dickens1812–1870Little Dorrit (1855-1857), Bk. I, Ch. 10
Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Richard Price (8 January 1789)
The Constitution of the United States asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Justice William Johnson (1823)
We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.
Lionel Trilling1905–1975Notebook entry (1948), published in Partisan Review: 50th Anniversary Edition, ed. William Philips (1985)
- Politics
Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason.
JPJohn Powell1645–1713Coggs vs. Bernard, Lord Raymond, 911, reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- Laws
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
John Stuart Mill1806–1873On Liberty (1859), Ch. 1: IntroductoryIn context
- Liberty
Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.
Mikhail Gorbachev1931–2022Speech to the 27th Party Congress, Moscow (25 February 1986)
- Democracy
What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel1770–1831Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction (tr. H. B. Nisbet, 1975)
- History
Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market.
Robert Reichborn 1946Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (2015)
- Economics