“As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 69
Context: Men are born free, that since they begin with no government, they must therefore institute government by voluntary agreement, and thus government must be their agent, not their superior. Since volition is a function of the individual, the individual has the precedent right. Then even if it was presumed that government did equate roughly with the moral shorcomings of humanity, it should still be limited and subsidiary. If everyone were invariably honest, able, wise, and kind, there should be no occasion for government. Everyone would readily understand what is desirable and what is possible in given circumstances, all would concur upon the best means toward their purpose and for equitable participation in the ensuing benefits, and would act without compulsion or default. The maximum production was certainly obtained from such voluntary action arising from personal initiative. But since human beings will sometimes lie, shirk, break promises, fail to improve their faculties, act imprudently, seize by violence the goods of others, and even kill one another in anger or greed, the government might be defined as the police organization. In that case, it must be described as a necessary evil. It would have no existence as a separate entity, and no intrinsic authority; it could not be justly empowered to act excepting as individuals infringed one another's rights, when it should enforce prescribed penalties. Generally, it would stand in the relation of a witness to contract, holding a forfeit for the parties. As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.
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Isabel Paterson 17
author and editor 1886–1961Related quotes
“If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war.”
Comments to his pastor (April 1861) as quoted in Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow Mary Anna Jackson (1895) http://books.google.com/books?id=bG2vg5cH004C, Ch. IX : War Clouds — 1860 - 1861, p. 141; This has sometimes been paraphrased as "War is the sum of all evils." Before Jackson's application of the term "The sum of all evils" to war, it had also been applied to slavery by abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay in The Writings of Cassius Marcellus Clay : Including Speeches and Addresses (1848), p. 445; to death by Georg Christian Knapp in Lectures on Christian Theology (1845), p. 404; and it had also been used, apparently in relation to arrogance in a translation of "Homily 24" in The Homilies of S. John Chrysostom on the First Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (1839), p. 331 <!-- earliest use thus far found ~ Kalki 2008·01·21 -->
Context: If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.
“ Trump Doesn’t Need To Talk Like A Con-Servative http://www.wnd.com/2016/03/trump-doesnt-need-to-talk-like-a-conservative/,” WND.com, March 17, 2016
2010s, 2016
“The best government is that which governs least.”
Motto of United States Magazine and Democratic Review. First used in introductory essay by editor John L. O'Sullivan in the premier issue (October, 1837, p. 6 http://books.google.com/books?id=HGtJAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA6&dq=%22governs+least%22). Attributed to Jefferson by Henry David Thoreau, this statement is cited in his essay on civil disobedience, but the quote has not been found in Jefferson's own writings. It is also commonly attributed to Thomas Paine, perhaps because of its similarity in theme to many of his well-documented expressions such as "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."
Misattributed
Variant: "That government is best which governs least"; reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 56
Source: Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, 1939, p. 94
On Manners and Fashion
Essays on Education (1861)
“A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane.”
Quoted in R. B. Lindsay, "On the Relation of Mathematics and Physics," Scientific Monthly 59, 456 (Dec. 1944)
Attributed
As quoted in an interview by Rami Eljundi in World Internet News (26 April 2006)
Twitter https://twitter.com/BillWhittle/status/885563016120459264 (13 July 2017)
2010s