government

A hard government

It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.

— Benjamin Franklin

Somebody has to do something

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

— Jerry Garcia

With or without religion

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

— Steven Weinberg

Dangerous to be right

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

— Voltaire

We are people of this generation

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit . . . . if we appear to seek the unattainable, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.

— the Port Huron Statement, 11-June-1962, Students for a Democratic Society

Laws do not persuade

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

— Seneca, 65 AD

The most powerful instrument

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

— Lyndon Baines Johnson

The U.S. Constitution

The U.S. Constitution may not be perfect, but it's better than what we've got now.

— Sandy Shaw

A false sense of insecurity

When you replace speed cameras with duds, what you're doing is giving people a false sense of insecurity.

— Bill Lockyer

California Attorney General (2002)

No safe depository of the ultimate powers

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretions.

— Thomas Jefferson

1802

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