“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!”

Source: Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

2000s

The Black Coat (2013)

A Testament (1957)

Source: Nature of Man and His Government (1959), p. 73

That is a contradiction in terms as ridiculous as 'constructive rape.'

p. 14
Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978)

197
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives. There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties. No government as such is ever in favor of the freedom of the individual. It invariably seeks to limit that freedom, if not by overt denial, then by seeking constantly to widen its own functions.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address (March 2, 1930); reported in Public Papers of Governor Roosevelt (1930), p. 710.
1930s

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)