Quotes tagged “government”

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The internet treats censorship like damage and routes around it.

— John Gilmore

The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.

— Edward Dowling

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

— Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just keep your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

 

— Frank Zappa

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions ......of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal, ' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.

— Matt Santos

My job is to get to the right answer, not the consensus answer. Sometimes the only way to get there is dissent.

— Eric Schmidt

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

— Albert Einstein

A little rebellion is a good thing now and then.

— Thomas Jefferson

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that enough good men do nothing.

— Edmund Burke

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire.

— Bruce Sterling

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself.

— President Jimmy Carter

They're just rules.... They're written in a book, not carved in stone. And even if they were in stone, so what? A bunch of us just made them up.

— Grand Nagus Gint

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

— Sandy Shaw

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

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

— Jerry Garcia

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's not the voting that's Democracy, it's the counting.

— Tom Stoppard

• "All I want is peace on earth, good will toward men."
• "We're the United States Government. We don't do that sort of thing!"

— from the movie Sneakers

• Anarchy, it is not the law, it is just a good idea.
• Anarchy doesn't mean 'without rules'; it means 'without rulers'.

— Paxus Calta

god forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion . . . the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.

— Thomas Jefferson

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

— Thomas Jefferson

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage. (regarding the fall of the Athenian Republic)

— Alexander Tyler

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

— Abraham Lincoln

The single most powerful faction in politics today is not liberalism or conservatism, but privilege and corruption.

— Paul Kienitz

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

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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Benjamin Franklin

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

— C.A. Beard

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

— Abraham Lincoln

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

— Abraham Lincoln

Gone are the far-off days of worthy debate. Politics today has to be sold to a viewer whose finger is poised over the television zapper. The 1988 campaign set new lows … [it] also demonstrated the power of image-making in changing a result.

— The Economist

Facts are a better basis for decisions than ideology.

— Howard Dean

Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism means peace and tranquility to all.

— August Spies

Anarchism is a tendency in the history of human thought and action which seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, and hierarchic structures of all kinds and to challenge their legitimacy -- and if they cannot justify their legitimacy, which is quite commonly the case, to work to undermine them and expand the scope of freedom.

— Noam Chomsky

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

QUESTION AUTHORITY! THINK FOR YOURSELF.... Before it becomes illegal.

—

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

— Frank Zappa

Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and "ticks," a small, annoying bloodsucker.

— Dave Barry

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

— Bill Lockyer

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

— Seneca, 65 AD

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

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

— Seneca the Younger