Government- christiansquoting.org.uk

Republicans think people are fundamentally evil, and that if government leaves them alone, they will do the right thing. Democrats on the other hand think that people are fundamentally good, but they can't possibly do the right thing without government intervention.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give, give. The great fish swallows up the small, and he who is most strenuous for the Rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of Government. == Abigail Adams, letter to John Adams, November 27, 1775

Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.-- Ambrose Bierce

The principal purpose of the Democratic Party is to use the force of government to take property away from the people who earn it and give it to people who do not.--Neal Boortz

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. -- William H. Borah

Libertarians understand a very simple fact of life: Government doesn't work. It can't deliver the mail on time, it doesn't keep our cities safe, it doesn't educate our children properly. But people love to play a gigantic game of "let's pretend": Let's pretend the War on Poverty really does help poor people. Let's pretend the War on Drugs really does reduce drug abuse and crime. Let's pretend the right government program can keep the wrong people out of the country. --Harry Browne WorldNetDaily.com (6/20/2002)

Whenever Parliament is persuaded to assume the offices of executive government, it will lose all the confidence, love and veneration which it has ever enjoyed whilst it was supposed to be the corrective and control on the acting powers of the state. This would be the event though its conduct in such a perversion of its functions would be tolerable, just and moderate; but if it should be iniquitous, violent, full of passion and full of faction it would be considered as the most intolerable of all modes of tyranny. - Edmund Burke.

A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser man distrusts both his neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government. --Taylor Caldwell, _The Devil's Advocate_ (1952)

Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) In his veto of the Texas Seed Bill, 16 Feb 1887

YOU HAVE BEEN SAT TO LONG HERE FOR ANY GOOD YOU HAVE BEEN DOING. DEPART, I SAY, AND LET US HAVE DONE WITH YOU. IN THE NAME OF GOD, GO!.
OLIVER CROMWELl 1599-1658 Addressing the Rump Parliament. April 1653. Memorials of English Affairs.

WEEDS AND NETTLES, BRIARS AND THORNS, HAVE THRIVEN UNDER YOUR SHADOW, DISSETTLEMENT AND DIVISION, DISCONTENTMENT AND DISSATISFACTION, TOGETHER WITH REAL DANGERS TO THE WHOLE.
Cromwell's speech dissolving the 1st Protectoral Parliament.

IN EVERY GOVERNMENT THERE MUST BE SOMEWHAT FUNDAMENTAL, SOMEWHAT LIKE A MAGNA CHARTA, THAT SHOULD BE STANDING AND UNALTERABLE...THAT PARLIAMENTS SHOULD NOT MAKE THEMSELVES PERPETUAL IS A FUNDAMENTAL.
Cromwell in a speech to the first Protectorate Parliament, 12 September 1654

The discontent of the people is more dangerous to a monarch than all the might of his enemies on the battlefield. --Isabella d' Este (1474-1530) (In a letter to her husband, February 1495)

The most powerful men are not public men: a public man is responsible, and a responsible man is a slave. It is private life that governs the world.
Benjamin Disraeli

The less government we have, the better. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Politics'

The less government we have, the better the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is, the influence of private character, the growth of the individual. R. W. Emerson.

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society, only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society, some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief, all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man.-- Emerson

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. -Milton Friedman (1912-____) In "The Speaker's Electronic Reference Collection," AApex Software, 1994.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.-Milton Friedman (1912-____) - In "The Speaker's Electronic Reference Collection," AApex Software,1994.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.- Milton Friedman

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand. - Milton Friedman

I look upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship,but none where the State has really lived for the poor.--Mahatma Gandhi, Interview to Nirmal Kumar Bose _The Hindustan Times_ 10/17/1935

It is the Parliamentary majority which has the potential for tyranny. The thing that the Courts cannot protect you against is Parliament - the traditional protector of our liberties. But Parliament is constantly making mistakes and could in theory become the most oppressive instrument in the world.
Lord Hailsham, former Lord Chancellor. Sunday Times 19 July 1970.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. --Frank Herbert,"The Dosadi Lesson: A Gowachin Assessment" _Dosadi Experiment_ (1978)

Let us go forth not as defenders of the status quo,but as crusaders with a revolution idea - that government should be the servant and not the master of the people; that its purpose is to protect, not deny, each man's freedom; that the purpose of a free press is to liberate, not enslave the human spirit. A. S. Hills

Lyndon Johnson used the War on Poverty to enslave blacks as dependent Democratic voters and succeeded in destroying many black families by pushing fathers out of the house and encouraging children to have children in exchange for welfare checks. The Republicans are fighting back with the War on Drugs, which has permanently disenfranchised 11% of the black vote with felony convictions. Congratulations, Demopublicans for proving once again that government is here to help. --Bill Holmes

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favorable hearers.--Richard Hooker (c. 1554-1600)_Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_ [1593], Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 1

By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments. The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments, that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity. --John Hospers

I used to believe the government was the answer to all our problems. But the . . . government, I've concluded, is now an insufferable jungle of self-serving bureaucrats. - Chet Huntley (1911 &endash; 1974)

It seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing . . . a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brain- washing enhanced by pharmacological methods. --Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread. Thomas Jefferson

It is not by the consolidation, or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.
Thomas Jefferson

Sir, I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed. - Samuel Johnson (Boswell: Life of Johnson)

How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Dr Johnson

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.- - Bertrand de Jouvenel

The basis of effective government is public confidence, and that confidence is endangered when ethical standards falter or appear to falter. John F. Kennedy, message to Congress, April 27, 1961

The republican form of government, whether it be solely aristocratic or a mixture of aristocratic and democratic elements, seems to me to be much preferred." This belief was not rooted in some idea of human greatness but rather in his profound sense of sin. For he adds: "Because of sinful human nature, it is safer and better to let several people together steer the ship of state so that one may restrain the other when the lust for power might degenerate into tyranny. - Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism Source and Stronghold of our Constitutional Liberties, , 1874, quoting Calvin's Institutes, 4.20.8

Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure. -- Robert Lefevre

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.--John Lehman

Every country has the government it deserves. - Joseph de Maistre, Lettres et Opuscules Inédits, 16 August 1811.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency. - Eugene McCarthy

Government is always religion applied to economics.--R. E. McMaster

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. -- H. L. Mencken

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster. --Ludwig von Mises _Human Action_ (1949)

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good. - Daniel Moynihan (1927-____) INY "Post," 14 May 1969.

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.- Daniel Moynihan (1927-____) NY "Times," 2 Marc1976.

The question nowadays is not what makes government work. The question is how do we make it stop. --P. J. O'Rourke

The best government is that which governs least- John L. O'Sullivan (1813-1895).

Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?--Axel Oxenstierna, letterr, 24 October 1648.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. Tom Paine

Governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments.-William Penn

Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos." ~ Polybius, c. 125 BC

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. - Ronald Reagan (1911 &endash; )

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. --Bertrand Russell

It is undeniable that Parliament has suffered in the eyes of the general public a loss of prestige in the last seventy years...It must not be forgotten that there can be no check upon the unscrupulous use of power by a government which finds itself in command of a majority in the House of Commons".
Professor Wade, introduction to 10th edition of Dicey's "Law and Constitution" 1960.

Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection; that Thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government.--- George Washington, prayer after his first inauguration

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.--George Washington

All government originates in families, and if neglected there, it will hardly exist in society...The foundation of all free government and of all social order must be laid in families and in the discipline of youth. Noah Webster

Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage.--Walter Williams