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Quotes about government

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If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?
Samuel Adams1722–1803Instructions to Boston’s Representatives (May 1764), also quoted in Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan (1997), by William M. Fowler Jr., p. 51
- Liberty
The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Jane Addams1860–1935Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), ch. 1; cf. Al Smith
- Democracy
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
Fred Allen1894–1956
Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can “the consent of the governed” be given, if the right to vote be denied?
Susan B. Anthony1820–1906On the United States Declaration of Independence in her “Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?” speech before her trial for voting (1873)
- Democracy
- Voting
The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do.
Susan B. Anthony1820–1906Account of Matilda Joslyn Gage (June 20, 1873) to Kansas Leavenworth Times (July 3, 1873)
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
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Part 3, Chapter 10
- Power
The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanise them.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Aristotle384–322 BCPolitics, Book V,1314b.39
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.
Aristotle384–322 BCPolitics, book IV, 1291.b34
- Democracy
- Liberty
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
Aristotle384–322 BC
- Democracy
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
Aristotle384–322 BCPolitics, Book V, 1311a.11
The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.
Margaret Atwoodborn 1939The Progressive interview (2010)
- Democracy
The root of a nation’s misfortunes has to be sought in the moral failings of the government.
Aung San Suu Kyiborn 1945In Quest of Democracy (1991)
- Morality
Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of tentative agreements…
Dave Barryborn 1947
- Dave Barry