Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [321-340] of 1384 Government quotesGovernment QuotesGovernment Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes 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 Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?~ William O. Douglas I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.~ Frederick Douglass Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.~ Frederick Douglass Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.~ Frederick Douglass We must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find objectionable. If we fail in this task, we become victims of the precedents we create.~ Judge Robert Doumar Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print