“Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.”

—  William Godwin

"Summary of Principles" 2.7
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
Variant: Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it." by William Godwin?
William Godwin photo
William Godwin36
English journalist, political philosopher and novelist 1756–1836

Related quotes

“The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 427.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Segregation is wrong because it is a system of adultery perpetuated by an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Cobo Center speech (1963)

Ilana Mercer photo

“If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government—the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be. Put differently, matters previously subject to state jurisdiction have been pulled into the orbit of the judiciary.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

&quot;Whodunit? Who Meddled With Our Democracy?&quot; Part 2 http://american-exceptionalism.org/whodunit-who-meddled-with-our-american-democracy/, The Heartland Institute, May 18, 2018. <br class="br">2010s, 2018

Mark Ames photo

“It's widely accepted today that high schools are miserable, nerve-pinching stress machines. They are governed by dim hypocrites; the climate favors the cruelest and shallowest students, and many, if not most students, are constantly suppressing a burning sense of injustice, shame, and powerlessness.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part VI: Welcome to the Dollhouse, page 232.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

Eduard Bernstein photo

“Democracy is in principle the suppression of class government, though it is not yet the actual suppression of classes.”

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) German politician

Source: &quot;Evolutionary Socialism&quot; (1899) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/index.htm, Chapter III, The Tasks and Possibilities of Social Democracy

Ilana Mercer photo

“If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government—the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Conned About Marriage, Constitution and States’ Rights” http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/conned-about-marriage-constitution-and-states-rights, WorldNetDaily.com, January 23, 2014. <br class="br">2010s, 2014

John Allen Fraser photo

“Democracy is not a form of government. It is a political philosophy that can be embodied in various systems of government.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 1, The System of Government, p. 5

James Russell Lowell photo

“The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direction.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

On Democracy (6 October 1884)
Context: The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direction. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, and not the sudden innovation of theory; in fact, they had a profound disbelief in theory, and knew better than to commit the folly of breaking with the past. They were not seduced by the French fallacy that a new system of government could be ordered like a new suit of clothes. They would as soon have thought of ordering a new suit of flesh and skin. It is only on the roaring loom of time that the stuff is woven for such a vesture of their thought and experience as they were meditating. They recognized fully the value of tradition and habit as the great allies of permanence and stability. They all had that distaste for innovation which belonged to their race, and many of them a distrust of human nature derived from their creed.

Bertrand Russell photo

“Power may be defined as the production of intended effects.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 3: The Forms of Power

Alain de Botton photo

“Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, p. 84.

Related topics