Government

A government is a body that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws within a civil, corporate, religious, academic, or other organization or group.

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• [Administration] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom restrained from acting, such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America (1835)

• A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people. It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spake Zarathustra, XI. The New Idol

• Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.
  • William Lyon Mackenzie King, Message of the Carillon (1927)

• If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.
  • U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting; Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)

• What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
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    • "Do you know who is responsible?" "Why of course, it's the government!" "Jill, 'the government' is several million people."
      • Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
    
    
    • Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government.
      • Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech at Riverside Church in New York City (1967-04-04)
    
    
    • Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.
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        • People should not be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.
          • V in V for Vendetta (2006)
        
        
        • What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
          • James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 51
        
        
        • 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 In The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920
        
        
        • A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned.
          • Shepard Book, Firefly, episode "War Stories".
        
        

        Unsourced

        • A properly functioning free market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as crabgrass springs from suburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores... Capitalism is a government program.
          • George Will
        
        
        • Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
          • Adam Smith
        
        
        • Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.
          • Gerhard Kocher
        
        
        • Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
          • P. J. O'Rourke
        
        
        • Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.
          • Leon Trotsky
        
        
        • Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.
          • Robert Lefevre
        
        
        • I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
          • Henry David Thoreau
        
        
        • It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.
          • Machiavelli
        
        
        • It's hard to argue with the government. Remember, they run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, so they must know a thing or two about satisfying women.
          • Scott Adams
        
        
        • I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
          • Winston Churchill
        
        
        • No government, of its own motion, will increase its own weakness, for that would mean to acquiesce in its own destruction ... governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
          • H.L. Mencken
        
        
        • Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
          • Albert Einstein
        
        
        • Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.
          • Ronald Reagan
        • Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
          • Jeremy Bentham
        • The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.
          • H.L. Mencken
        
        
        • The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.
          • Charles Bukowski
        
        
        • The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
          • Walter Williams
        
        
        • The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.
          • Tacitus
        
        
        • The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
          • William Beveridge
        
        
        • The one who votes decides nothing. The one who counts the vote decides everything.
          • Joseph Stalin
        
        
        • The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.
          • James Madison
        
        
        • The system you hate is the system you support!
          • Crude S.S. a swedish Hardcore Punk Band
        
        
        • There's no government like No Government.
          • Jackney Sneeb
        
        
        • The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.
          • Max Stirner
        
        
        • The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
          • James Madison
        
        
        • Today marks a significant move towards reforming our correctional system. For too long, our system of corrections has operated in the shadows of government, with very little oversight and accountability. It’s time to shine a light on how we can better improve the management of our prisons.
          • Mitt Romney
        
        
        • Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been found that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
          • Benjamin Disraeli
        
        
        • You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.
          • Charles A. Beard
        
        
        • Yes, government is far too big. But that's not to say that it has much control. It makes a million laws and can't enforce most of them. So many laws, so little order.
          • Joseph Sobran
        
        
        • Governments vary. A monarchy protects the interests of the people through the interest of the state while a democracy protects the interest of the state through the interests of the people.
          • Anonymous
        
        
        • Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. - Unknown
        
        
        • The administration of government, like a guardianship, ought to be directed to the good of those who confer and not of those who receive the trust.
          • Cicero
        
        
        • Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration, but temper and moderation generally produce permanence in all things.
          • Seneca
        
        
        • No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable.
          • Madison
        
        
        • The best government is not that which renders men the happiest, but that which renders the greatest number happy.
          • Duclos
        
        
        • No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet every one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades,—that of government.
          • Socrates
        
        
        • In the early ages men ruled by strength; now they rule by brain, and so long as there is only one man in the world who can think and plan, he will stand head and shoulders above him who cannot.
          • Beecher
        
        
        • The proper function of a government is to make it easy for people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.
          • Gladstone
        
        
        • All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
          • James A. Garfield
        
        
        • Those who think must govern those who toil.
          • Goldsmith
        
        
        • 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 sufficient warrant.
          • John Stuart Miller
        
        
        • Economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics
          • Ludwig Von Mises
        
        
        • A government by secrecy benefits no one. It injures the people it seeks to serve; it damages its own integrity and operation. It breeds distrust, dampens the fervor of its citizens and mocks their loyalty.
          • Senator Long, 1964
        
        
        • The Democrats' biggest foe isn't conservatives or the religious right, but their deep, ingrained assumption that human rationality will win the day over human nature.
          • ZZ Packer
        
        
        • What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
          • Adolph Hitler
        
        
        • A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away
          • Barry Goldwater
        
        
        • Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens and then everybody disagrees.
          • Boris Marshalov
        
        
        • Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.
          • Calvin Coolidge
        
        
        • A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
          • Edward Murrow
        
        
        • The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough government strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.
          • Franklin D. Roosevelt
        
        
        • A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property – an unpaid tax bill.
          • Hans F. Sennholz, Debts & Deficits
        
        
        • A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
          • James Madison
        
        
        • If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
          • James Madison
        
        
        • Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better. **Jane Auer
        
        
        • The supply of government exceeds the demand
          • Lewis Lapham
        
        
        • The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.
          • Patrick Henry
        
        
        • 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 Jefferson
        
        
        • I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. **Thomas Jefferson
        
        
        • I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.
          • Thomas Jefferson
        
        
        • If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.
          • Thomas Jefferson
        
        
        • The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
          • Thomas Jefferson
        
        
        • Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
          • Will Rogers
        
        
        • You can only govern men by serving them.
          • Victor Cousin