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Quotes about government

575 quotes from 235 people

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We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
Margaret Thatcher1925–2013The Bruges Speech (20 September 1988)
Progress of human civilization in the area of defining human freedom is not made from the top down. No king, no parliament, no government ever extended to the people more rights than the people insisted upon.
Terence McKenna1946–2000“True Hallucinations” (1993)
- Freedom
The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.
Simone Weil1909–1943Prelude to Politics (1943), p. 199
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
POP. J. O'Rourke1947–2022Parliament of Whores (1991)
- Democracy
Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum.
POP. J. O'Rourke1947–2022Parliament of Whores (1991)
- Power
The establishment of our new government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness by a reasonable compact in civil society.
George Washington1732–1799Letter to Catharine Macaulay Graham (1790)
- America
Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.
Harry S. Truman1884–1972Address at the National Archives dedicating a shrine for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (15 December 1952)
- Liberty
A rational anarchist believes that concepts, such as “state” and “society” and “government” have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Leo Tolstoy1828–1910Christianity and Patriotism (1895), as translated in The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï, Vol. 20, p. 44
- War & Peace
Keep the church and the state forever separate.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Speech to the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines, Iowa (1875)
- Religion
The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.
George Orwell1903–1950“As I Please,” Tribune (28 April 1944)
- Freedom
Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.
John Updike1932–2009Buchanan Dying: A Play (1974), Act I
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.
Umberto Eco1932–2016“Can Television Teach?” in Screen Education 31 (1979), p. 12
- Democracy
- Television
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.
John C. Calhoun1782–1850Speech (13 February 1835)
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Aleister Crowley1875–1947The Book of the Law (1904), III:60
- Freedom
- Laws