Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [321-340] of 1389 Government quotesGovernment QuotesGovernment Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand.~ Benjamin Disraeli I repeat... that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist.~ Benjamin Disraeli The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans.~ Benjamin Disraeli It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.~ Benjamin Disraeli Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.~ Benjamin Disraeli For you see, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.~ Benjamin Disraeli The GOP has as much commitment to small government as the Democratic Party has to a strong national defense.~ John Dobbins [M]onopoly profits exist over the long run only when the government guarantees them, as in utilities and cable. And for concentration of market power, no robber baron can hold a candle to the U.S. government.... The hugest concentration of market power in this country does not lie with the likes of Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates, but with government itself.... No private company, no matter how huge or wealthy, could possibly have as much widespread power over the function of American markets as government does. And this power is exercised with essential unseriousness.... And unlike business attempts to make money, which necessarily involve selling something to a willing consumer, government’s market manipulations require forcing people into situations -- whether paying for cars or food, paying for R&D or new technologies, or selling off a part of their company -- that they would not have wanted to be in but for the government’s ham-handed threat of force.... Nothing could serve the workings of the marketplace better than [government] leaving it.~ Brian Doherty Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer.~ Justice William O. Douglas Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.~ Justice William O. Douglas Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? ~ Justice William O. Douglas The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.~ Justice William O. Douglas Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.~ Justice William O. Douglas Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.~ Justice William O. Douglas The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.~ Justice William O. Douglas My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.~ Justice William O. Douglas The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.~ Justice William O. Douglas The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.~ Justice William O. Douglas These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence.~ Justice William O. Douglas But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas; that is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.~ William O. Douglas Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print