Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [281-300] of 1389 Government quotesGovernment QuotesGovernment Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.~ Clarence S. Darrow If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private school . . . At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men.~ Clarence S. Darrow I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.~ Clarence S. Darrow Government schools can't teach reading, writing, and arithmetic -- why should we trust them to teach morality, respect, and character? If public education does for ethics what it's done for learning, we'll end up with a generation of immoral, disrespectful, and characterless students.~ Steve Dasbach The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence; as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority.~ Justice David Davis It is ironic that our government, which has been relentlessly critical of the messages that popular culture imparts to our youth, would seek to silence an artist who uses the medium of hip hop to preach a message of self respect and self reliance to young women and girls.~ Lisa E. Davis I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.~ Charles De Gaulle ... the smaller the domain where choices among alternatives are made collectively, the smaller will be the probability that any individual's preference gets overruled.~ Anthony de Jasay People who live in states have as a rule never experienced the state of nature and vice-versa, and have no practical possibility of moving from the one to the other ... On what grounds, then, do people form hypotheses about the relative merits of state and state of nature? ... My contention here is that preferences for political arrangements of society are to a large extent produced by these very arrangements, so that political institutions are either addictive like some drugs, or allergy-inducing like some others, or both, for they may be one thing for some people and the other for others.~ Anthony de Jasay A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.~ Bertrand de Jouvenel A wise man neither suffers himself to be governed, nor attempts to govern others.~ Jean de la Bruyere There is in human affairs one order which is best. That order is not always the one which exists; but it is the order which should exist for the greatest good of humanity. God knows, it and will it: man's duty it is to discover and establish it.~ Emile Louis Victor de Laveleye Every nation gets the government it deserves.~ Joseph de Maistre The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.~ Charles de Montesquieu In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.~ Charles-Louis de Secondat The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.~ Charles-Louis De Secondat After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It 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, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.~ Alexis de Tocqueville Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.~ Alexis de Tocqueville A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.~ Alexis de Tocqueville [Tyrannical] power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?~ Alexis de Tocqueville Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print