Quotes about government
page 43

“I hope that your Government will refrain from any action which would widen or deepen this already grave crisis and that we can agree to resume the path of peaceful negotiation.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, First letter to Nikita Khrushchev

Peace, Hope

“I want you to shake the hands of every Minister in the Provisional Government ( Irish Free State )who's responsible for my death. I forgive them and so must you, Erskine. The second will apply if ever you go into Irish politics. You must not speak of my execution in public.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Robert Erskine's last jail cell words to his son, also named Erskine, in November 1922. His son would become President of Ireland 52 years later. Cited in " The Riddle of Erskine Childers " By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London (1977), pg. 320.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

Death, Forgiveness

“The Syrian crisis must be resolved by a vote by Syrians. We are concerned by the civil war and foreign interference. The government [of President Bashar al-Assad] must be respected by other countries until the next [2014 presidential] elections and then it is up to the people to decide.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

"Iran leader warns on Syria intervention" http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/iran-leader-warns-on-syria-intervention/story-fn3dxix6-1226665312188, The Australian, (June 17, 2013)

War, People, Country

“While I was mayor, I learned that government is a system of checks and balances — you can't simply walk in and change things. It takes time. I used to joke that it would be nice if a magic wand came with the job, if I could just wave it and make things work the way they're supposed to. But unfortunately it's not that easy. The bureaucracy is so huge that in a lot of situations all I can do is tell people the truth and let the chips fall where they may.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)

People, Truth, Way, Learning

“Gentlemen, when I consider the objections put forward to the grant of self-government I can hardly keep my patience. What is it that they say? They say that we are not educated enough to get self-government. My answer is: whose fault is it? For the last 150 years you have been governing this country and yet you have not succeeded in educating the people of this country to such an extent that they may be fit for governing themselves.”

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Speech delivered on 18th March 1918, at Rammurti’s pavilion at a meeting held to support the deputation to England. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
1918

People, Education, Patience, Country

“This lesson was firmly in the minds of those who made the American Constitution. They proposed to adopt institutions under which the people should be supreme, and the government should derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. They were determined to be a sovereign people under a government having such powers as they from time to time should confer upon it by a written constitution. They did not propose to be under the tyranny of either the executive or the legislature.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People, Time

“The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Men, Way

“If it was possible for men who exercise their reason, to believe that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these Colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them has been granted to that body. But a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that Government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (6 July 1775)

Wisdom, Men, Exercises, Sense

“Syllables govern the world.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

Power.
Table Talk (1689)

World

“What is important will be manipulated by the government.”

Gordon Tullock (1922–2014) American economist

Tullock challenges: happiness, revolutions, and democracy

“The Iranian regime knows it lacks the military power and the political support needed to seize direct control in any Arab state, least of all Iraq. This is why it plans to create a state-within-a-state situation — where the formal government in Baghdad, like the formal governments in Beirut or Damascus, will be an empty shell, with real power exercised by heavily armed and well-funded groups linked to Tehran. These Iranian-controlled groups would command chunks of territory while letting Sunni jihadists set up shop in their own neck of the woods. In other words, Iran is not aiming to defeat IS, let alone destroy it. All Tehran wants is to create a safe corridor through Iraqi territory to Syria and thence to Lebanon.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

We’re letting Iran and ISIS carve up Iraq http://nypost.com/2015/03/15/were-letting-iran-and-isis-carve-up-iraq/, New York Post (March 15, 2015). New York Post

Exercises, Support

“If we believe, as we do, in our political theory that the people are the guardians of government, we should not subject our government to the bitterness and hatred of those who have not been born of our tradition and are not willing to yield an increase to the strength inherent in our institutions. American liberty is dependent on quality in citizenship. Our obligation is to maintain that citizenship at its best. We must have nothing to do with those who would undermine it. The retroactive immigrant is a danger in our midst. His discontent gives him no time to seize a healthy opportunity to improve himself. His purpose is to tear down. There is no room for him here. He needs to be deported, not as a substitute for, but as a part of his punishment. There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

People, Law, Tear, Time

“By Jesus’s time the Law of Moses, originally established for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers, resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business from his sick-bed in the chimney-corner, unaware of the changes that have taken place in the world since he was able to get about: his authority must not be questioned, yet his orders, since no longer relevant, must be reinterpreted in another sense, if the business is not to go bankrupt. When the old man says, for instance: “It is time for the women to grind their lapfuls of millet in the querns,” this is taken to mean: “It is time to send the sacks of wheat to the water-mill.””

Robert Graves book King Jesus

Source: King Jesus (1946), Ch. 21.

Women, World, Family, Law

“Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance.”

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) English politician and Earl

Vol. 1, p. 8; "A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)

Truth, World

“In examining any dictatorship, there are two good tests. Firstly, what is the relation between the rulers and the proletariat or common people? Are the rulers members of the proletariat, as they would have you believe? Do they even identify their interests with those of ordinary citizens? The truth seems to be that, no matter where you find them, the so-called proletarian dictatorships are actually controlled by a small elite who ordinarily lose little sleep in worrying about the rights of the common man. Secondly, have the proletariat any effective say in what the rulers do? In the proletarian dictatorships I am familiar with, ordinary people enjoy little or no control over their Government or over their own lives and futures.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 162
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

People, Truth, Sleep, Future

“Democracies owe their existence to national loyalties — the loyalties that are supposedly shared by government and opposition, by all political parties, and by the electorate as a whole. Wherever the experience of nationality is weak or non-existent, democracy has failed to take root. For without national loyalty, opposition is a threat to government, and political disagreements create no common ground.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Democracy, Loyalty

“Sarkozy was elected last year by insisting on immigrants speaking French and insisting that they integrate into the French culture…Obama’s call for Americans to learn Spanish to accommodate the onslaught of Mexican immigrants makes the French government sound like Rush Limbaugh.”

Rachel Marsden (1974) journalist

Contrasting Barack Obama with French President Nicolas Sarkozy Barack Obama Has Little In Common With Europe http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27669

Learning

“Among those principles deemed sacred in America; among those sacred rights considered as forming the bulwark of their liberty, which the government contemplates with awful reverence, and would approach only with the most cautious circumspection, there is none of which the importance is more deeply impressed on the public mind than the liberty of the press. That this liberty is often carried to excess, that is has sometimes degenerated to licentiousness, is seen and is lamented; but the remedy has not yet been discovered. Perhaps it is an evil inseparable from the good with which it is allied; perhaps it is a shoot which cannot be stripped from the stalk without wounding vitally the plant from which it is torn.”

George Nicholas (1754–1799) American lawyer

Letter to a friend in Virginia (1798); cited in The Great Quotations, compiled by George Seldes (1960)

Evil

“Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 38)

People, Way

“A neutral observer would have no difficulty in identifying instances of disconnect between government and people, most obviously in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes where civil society’s voices are muzzled and where peaceful protests are prohibited or severely suppressed,24 but also to a lesser degree in democracies, particularly “representative democracies” that do not genuinely represent, business-driven democracies and so-called “lobby-democracies”, where elected officials tend to be more responsive to the lobbies than to the population.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

People, Peace, Democracy, Business

“For me, the Profumo affair symbolizes the evanescence of male government compared to women’s cosmic power.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 11

Women

“I believe people are not free if all they can do is cast a vote every five years to decide who should govern them. What does it mean to a man in a shack built by himself with no amenities and not knowing where his next meal is coming from, to vote? An election is about power. It is relevant to freedom only if those elected govern efficiently, honestly and carry out the electoral promises made.”

Harry Schwarz (1924–2010) South African activist

The Mercury (17 November 2009).
Final speech

People, Freedom

“The separation of races happened long before the Nationalist Government. God separated the races.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As prime minister to an Austrian journalist during a European tour, 3 September 1984, as cited in The Star, and Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, PW Botha in his own words, p. 24

God

“The things you hear now about European unemployment -- that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed to adjust, that there are inflationary fears -- are the same things that were said during the early 1930. It is well established that government spending began to pull Germany out of its slump in 1935. There is no known reason why spending for peace can't do as well at getting the economy going as spending for war.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Lawrence Summers in: David Warsh (April 27, 1986) "It Did Happen Here, Too", Boston Globe, p. A1.
1980s

War, Fear, Peace, Problem

“All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Journal entry (January 1819)

Business

“A case can be made... that secrecy is for losers. For people who don't realize how important information really is. The Soviet Union realized this too late. Openness is now a singular, and singularly American, advantage. We put it in peril by poking along in a mode of an age now past. It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most pervasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

Secrecy, ch. 8 (1998)

War, People, Age, Support

“It (Pakistan) is not a failed state, but it is threatening to become one. A great concern is weighing on our minds. In Pakistan, with regret, I would say we don't know who is in control there. Whether it is the army or the president or the government”

P. Chidambaram (1945) Indian politician

Pakistan threatening to become failed state - India http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-38383620090306, Reuters, 2009-03-6.

“I tell people that because you don’t bear any responsibility, you put me in danger. If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I’m saying is common sense. It’s very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Who Is Ai Weiwei?, 2009

People, Thinking, Sense

“Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it — we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Rice University speech

Hostility, Age, World, Peace

“With all the efforts now to disassociate President Bush from conservatism, I am starting to believe that conservatism itself — not the political machine, mind you, but the ideology — is heading toward that misty land-over-the-ocean where ideologies go after they've shuffled off this mortal coil. Sort of like the way post-Stalinist lefties used to say, "You can't say Communism's failed. It's just never really been tried."But as it was with Communism, so with conservatism. When all the people who call themselves conservatives get together and run the government, they're on the line for it. Conservative president. Conservative House. Conservative Senate.What we appear to be in for now is the emergence of this phantom conservatism existing out in the ether, wholly cut loose from any connection to the actual people who are universally identified as the conservatives and who claim the label for themselves.We can even go a bit beyond this though. The big claim now is that President Bush isn't a conservative because he hasn't shrunk the size of government and he's a reckless deficit spender.But let's be honest: Balanced budgets and shrinking the size of government hasn't been part of conservatism — or to be more precise, Movement Conservatism — for going on thirty years. The conservative movement and the Republican party are the movement and party of deficit spending. And neither has any claim to any real association with limited or small government. Just isn't borne out by any factual record or political agenda. Not in the Reagan presidency, the Bush presidency or the second Bush presidency. The intervening period of fiscal restraint comes under Clinton.”

Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo

Talking Points Memo (2006-06-13) http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008733.php

People, Way, Communication, Effort

“The North American government used the quota system on imports of Cuban sugar not only to protect her own sugar industry, as demanded by her own producers, but also to make possible the unrestricted introduction into our country of North American manufactured goods.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

The Cuban Economy (1964)

Country

“We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Statement on the London bombings by George Galloway on behalf of Respect http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6929, July 7, 2005.

Country

“Trusting government nowadays means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press, 1999) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Freedom%20in%20Chains.htm

People

“As a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, your most important intervention was in suggesting that before investigating corruption allegations against senior officers, the CBI should get approval from the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) rather than the government. Didn’t the rejection of your proposal show that all political parties are united in shielding corrupt officers?”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

On the two institutions of Central Board of Investigations (CBI) and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).
Fali Sam Nariman: An Interview

“We owe our present happiness and prosperity, which has never been equalled in the annals of mankind, to a mixture of monarchical government.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

"The War Speeches of William Pitt", Oxford University Press, 1915, p. 29
Speech in the House of Commons, 1 February 1793.

Happiness

“How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?
Les Mots du Général, Ernest Mignon, 1962
Fifth Republic and other post-WW2

Country

“We are worse [off] than we were during the times of apartheid. We are being killed by our own people. We are being oppressed by our own government. … Every mine has a politician inside. They give them money every month, they call it shares. But it is a protection fee to protect whites against the workers.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

To a workers rally at the Aurora mine, East Rand, as quoted in "Malema: Apartheid was better" http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2012/08/31/malema-apartheid-was-better, in Times Live (31 August 2012)

Money, People, Time

“The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Letter to H. N. Eldridge (12 December 1869) as quoted in Garfield (1978) by Allen Peskin, Ch. 13
1860s
Variant: The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.

People, Peace

“Google’s more powerful than any government now – people think it’s God. They’re storing all our data and one day they’re going to turn against us.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Quote reprinted http://www.nme.com/photos/in-her-own-words-mias-20-sharpest-quotes/172930/16/4#11 in NME Sourced quotes

God, People, Thinking

“The confectioner relied equally on the power which he possessed of injuring or benefiting, as he should elect, the property of nearly every man in the community. And, finally, he relied on the utility of his institution to the government, in the collection, safe keeping, and disbursement of its revenues; and to the public, in regulating domestic and foreign exchange, in furnishing a currency of nearly uniform value over the whole empire, and in which government dues could be paid without the procurement of sugar, that was scarce as well as cumbersome.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)

Communication

“The U. S. government is crushing liberty at nearly every turn. Our Constitutional rights are under attack like never before and we must fight back.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

On Facebook September 29, 2015
2010s

Fight

“We now face five years of an unbridled Conservative government that is intent on swingeing cuts, further attacks on society’s most vulnerable and on our NHS. This will severely limit what can be achieved but I am determined to work tirelessly to do what I can to make sure local people are heard in Parliament and protected from the worst of what is to come.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Column: Jo Cox – After a hard day’s night, the real work starts http://www.batleynews.co.uk/news/local/column-jo-cox-after-a-hard-day-s-night-the-real-work-starts-1-7264438 (16 May 2015)

People

“An ideal objectivist society with a limited government is superior to an anarcho-capitalist society in precisely the same way that an ideal socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. Socialism does better with perfect people than anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no argument against carrying an umbrella.”

David D. Friedman book The Machinery of Freedom

Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, p.134

People, Way, Sun, Perfection

“It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed by intelligent people, such as that democracy is the best form of government or that world peace depends upon world government, cannot be tested by the method of experimental science.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People, World, Peace, Democracy

“This Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

"Virginia Resolution of 1798" (December 1798)
1790s

Exercises, Sense, Evil

“And since every man retains, and can never be deprived of his natural right (founded on a regard to the general good) of relieving himself from all oppression, that is, from every thing that has been imposed upon him without his own consent; this must be the only true and proper foundation of all the governments subsisting in the world, and that to which the people who compose them have an unalienable right to bring them back.”

Joseph Priestley book Essay on the First Principles of Government

Section II, "Of Political Liberty"
Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771)

People, World, Nature

“One of the great movements in my lifetime among educated people is the need to commit themselves to action. Most people are not satisfied with giving money; we also feel we need to work. That is why there is an enormous surge in the number of unpaid staff, volunteers. The needs are not going to go away. Business is not going to take up the slack, and government cannot.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

"New Priorities" Dancing Toward The Future, Context Institute http://www.context.org/, (1992) 1990s and later

Money, People, Education, Feeling

“This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, Law, Nature, Sense

“Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Sex Is Politics" (1979)
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)

Religion, Way

“The public is governed as it reasons; its own prerogative is foolish speech and that of its governors is foolish action.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Le public est gouverné comme il raisonne. Son droit est de dire des sottises, comme celui des ministres est d'en faire.
Maximes et Pensées, #503

“Govern your tongue before all other things, following the gods.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

Symbol 7
The Symbols

God

“Freedom of expression doesn't mean tweeting through fake accounts. If the government has to be transparent, Twitterati should also reciprocate. This will help stop defamatory and criminal traffic on the Net. We should amend the law to force disclosure of identity.”

Kapil Sibal (1948) Indian lawyer and politician

On internet anonymity, as quoted in The govt does not understand social media nor does it know how to deal with it, says Kapil Sibal http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/it-minister-kapil-sibal-crackdowns-on-social-media-rth-campaign/1/247667.html, India Today (26 January 2013)

Law, Freedom, Help

“What a Chamberlain government would have done had there been no war in 1939 will never be known, but an election was due in 1940, and the manifesto proposals outlined by the Conservative Research Department embraced family allowances and the inclusion of insured persons' dependants in health cover—about half the advances usually attributed to Beveridge. As Lady Cecily Debenham wrote to Chamberlain's widow, Anne, after his death: "Neville was a Radical to the end of his days. It makes my blood boil when I see his ‘Tory’ and ‘Reactionary’ outlook taken as a matter of course because the Whirligig of Politics made him leader of the Tory party."”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Andrew J. Crozier, ‘ Chamberlain, (Arthur) Neville (1869–1940) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32347’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011, accessed 19 April 2013. About

Death, War, Health, Family

“Most often, our messing around and meddling in the affairs of other countries have unintended consequences. Sometimes just over in those countries that we mess with. We might support one faction, and it doesn't work, and it's used against us. But there's the blowback effect, that the CIA talks about, that it comes back to haunt us later on. For instance, a good example of this is what happened in 1953 when our government overthrew the Mossadegh government and we installed the Shah, in Iran. And for 25 years we had an authoritarian friend over there, and the people hated him, they finally overthrew him, and they've resented us ever since. That had a lot to do with the taking of the hostages in 1979, and for us to ignore that is to ignore history… Also we've antagonized the Iranians by supporting Saddam Hussein, encouraging him to invade Iran. Why wouldn't they be angry at us? But the on again off again thing is what bothers me the most. First we're an ally with Osama bin Laden, then he's our archenemy. Our CIA set up the madrasah schools, and paid money, to train radical Islamists, in Saudi Arabia, to fight communism… But now they've turned on us… Muslims and Arabs have long memories, Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and they don't remember our foreign policy that may have antagonized… The founders were absolutely right: stay out of the internal affairs of foreign nations, mind our own business, bring our troops home, and have a strong defense. I think our defense is weaker now than ever.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, Hate, People, School

“The Tibetan missionaries in their mood of bright confidence disconcerted the imperial governments by laughing the new movement into frustration. For a sham faith cannot stand ridicule.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Part VII, 1. Harking Back to the Tibetan Revolution
Darkness and the light (1941/42)

Faith, Confidence, Mood

“Government by emotion is identified with rule by tyranny.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 1 (p. 24).

“Don't be visionary', shouted trade and the spiritual blindness which is absurdly called practical common sense, 'morals have nothing to do with politics'. 'Don't talk of injustice. In this world we must compromise. Compromise is the very essence of government'. So it is, if you do not attempt to compromise moral principle. 'All government', says Edmund Burke, 'is founded upon compromise and barter'. 'But in all fair dealings the thing bought must bear some proportion to the purchase paid. None will barter away the immediate jewel of the soul'. And what is and always has been the immediate jewel of our national soul if it be not the equal rights of men? Compromise equal rights in the United States? Whittle a crowbar? How do we like it, as the boys say, as far as we have got? You may compromise questions of cotton and com, but you cannot long compromise a point of conscience. Moral principles are absolute and eternal. You may stretch an inch of India rubber to cover your hat; you cannot stretch a diamond the shadow of a hair.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men, World, Soul, Boy

“Last year, I filed Senate Bill Number 123 which penalizes bus drivers who commit criminal negligence in road mishaps with 20 years of imprisonment. The existing preventive policies require more teeth to achieve safety benefits. There is no guarantee to prevent all road accidents because of many factors including human, mechanical and environmental. But regulators like the LTO and the LTFRB carry the weight of preventing fatal accidents before these happen by strictly implementing the road safety fundamentals of all public utility vehicles. They have the responsibility to make all public transportation reasonably safe to drive and to travel on. These regulators must do their jobs. Stern measures need to be strictly implemented to ensure road safety. Conscious efforts from all sectors of government and the society should be at high level to avoid further loss of lives and damage to person and property. ‪”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, February 10). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152238895305610/ 2014, Facebook

Travel, Effort, Loss, Personality

“Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture. It's striking that Russian propaganda, in the criticisms it makes of us, always holds itself within certain limits. Stalin, that cunning Caucasian, is apparently quite ready to abandon European Russia, if he thinks that a failure to solve her problems would cause him to lose everything. Let nobody think Stalin might reconquer Europe from the Urals! It is as if I were installed in Slovakia, and could set out from there to reconquer the Reich. This is the catastrophe that will cause the loss of the Soviet Empire.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

night of 18-19 July 1941.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

World, History, Failure, Problem

“It is great comedy to hear the secular, pro-gay left, so hostile to states’ rights in virtually every instance, suddenly discover the tyranny of centralized government. The newly minted protectors of local rule find themselves demanding: “Why should Washington dictate marriage standards for Massachusetts and California? Let the people of those states decide for themselves.” This is precisely the argument conservatives and libertarians have been making for decades! Why should Washington dictate education, abortion, environment, and labor rules to the states? The American people hold widely diverse views on virtually all political matters, and the Founders wanted the various state governments to most accurately reflect those views. This is the significance of the 10th Amendment, which the left in particular has abused for decades.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2000s, 2001-2005

Hostility, Marriage, People, Education

“Hags live. Women traveling into feminist time/space are creating Hag-ocracy, the place we govern. To govern is to steer, to pilot.”

Mary Daly (1928–2010) American radical feminist philosopher and theologian

Source: Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978–1990), p. 15.

Women, Travel, Time

“We know, deep down, that repression is not the wave of the future. We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity. We know that free governments are the only way to ensure that the strong are just and the weak are valued. And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)

Hope, Way, Democracy, Failure

“I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the Crown and Monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge Empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of Government.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (29 October 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 274-275.
1850s

War, Happiness, People, Beauty

“He [Mick McGahey] has made it quite plain over the weekend—as has another miners' leader—that the object of what they are doing is not a wage negotiation…Its purpose is…to get rid of the elected government of the day. Now that is entirely a political approach and, he has said quite openly, he wishes to do it in order to get a left-wing government and obviously he expects a left-wing government to toe the line as far as he is concerned.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Interview with Robin Day on BBC Panorama (28 January 1974), quoted in The Times (29 January 1974), p. 1.
Prime Minister

“It is generally mentioned here, that Jews should be excluded from economic life as soon as possible. It seems that the Slovak government performs real and rapid measures to achieve this goal. Honorable Assembly! We are delighted to welcome it.”

János Esterházy (1901–1957) Czechoslovak member of Czechoslovak national parliament, russian nation politician and hungary nation polit…

About anti-Semitic measures to exclude Jews from economic and social life. Parliamentary speech on October 8, 1940.
Persecution of Jews

Life

“The government computer has one button: delete.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Zhang, Qichen. “ Ai Weiwei Says Censorship in China Will Ultimately Fail http://opennet.net/blog/2012/04/ai-weiwei-says-censorship-china-will-ultimately-fail.” Opennet, April 18, 2012. 2010-, 2012

“The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.”

Anton Chekhov book The Bet

The Bet (1889)

God

“Sometimes you don't know what is better: to talk with the governments of some States or directly with their American patrons and sponsors.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

6 December 2014, Владимир Путин @ facebook. com

“Peaceful nations must stand for the advance of democracy. No other system of government has done more to protect minorities, to secure the rights of labor, to raise the status of women, or to channel human energy to the pursuits of peace.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (September 2004)

Women, Peace, Democracy

“"I welcome the democratic process allowing all sections of society to express their views on the proposed legislation. The debate taking place is, in itself, helping the nation to understand that reconciliation is a difficult but necessary process." (on the government's controversial plans to set up a Commission empowered to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the political upheaval of 2000).”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Speech opening Parliament, 1 August 2005 (excerpts)

Understanding, Help

“For every day that God gives us, we thank the Lord of Hosts and His friend the Prophet, the latter of whom instituted here on earth a life of loveliness without envy or jealousy... We shall not give up this our life of loveliness, as long as we live, however much we are oppressed by the Government and its troops and policemen, its Congress and Senate, orators, newspaper scribes and authors, professors and paltry bishops, and even the antichrist himself, the Pope. No power on earth will succeed in preventing us from accomplishing God's sacred ordinances, as regards polygamy no less than all the other aspects that God has revealed to us. Polygamy as long as we live, say we women of Latter-Day Saints; polygamy or death!”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the women of Spanish Fork
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

Life, Death, Women, God

“Our national history has presented various phases of this problem. Slavery showed one; the complexities of interstate commerce have kept others constantly in mind. On the day the Constitution was finished, probably more people would have seen seeds of conflict and dangers to the Union in future commercial relations than in slavery. But commerce became a source of strength, while slavery be- came a cause of division. It brought the Union into danger; and in the end was destroyed itself. Where there was sincere acceptance of the dual sovereignty theory, where the States sought to do their full part, and accepted the de- terminations of the National Government as to the rest, the plan worked. Where the States sought more from the Federal authority than it could give, and resisted national demands — then came dissension and, at length, war.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

War, People, History, Problem

“I wouldn't put out a statement praising it, but we're not going to condemn it either. [Nixon's comment about the atrocities and genocide committed by the West Pakistan government against Bangladesh during the Bangladesh Liberation War]”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Volume XI, South Asia Crisis, 1971, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/xi/45650.htm,and The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass 1970s

War

“Good morning. This coming week I will be making the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to address a joint session of Congress. We have some business to attend to called the budget of the United States. The federal budget is a document about the size of a big city phone book, and about as hard to read from cover to cover. The blueprint I submit this week contains many numbers, but there is one that probably counts more than any other – $5.6 trillion. That is the surplus the federal government expects to collect over the next 10 years; money left over after we have met our obligations to Social Security, Medicare, health care, education, defense and other priorities. The plan I submit will fund our highest national priorities. Education gets the biggest percentage increase of any department in our federal government. We won't just spend more money on schools and education, we will spend it responsibly. We'll give states more freedom to decide what works. And as we give more to our schools we're going to expect more in return by requiring states and local jurisdictions to test every year. How else can we know whether schools are teaching and children are learning? Social Security and Medicare will get every dollar they need to meet their commitments. And every dollar of Social Security and Medicare tax revenue will be reserved for Social Security and Medicare.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Radio Address to the Nation (February 2001)

Money, Children, Health, Books

“America has no obligation to let you bring products into this nation without tariff or impost while you exploit the existence of authoritarian governments and environmental arbitrage. A 100% tariff on all of Apple's foreign-produced or assembled products should make the decision easy …”

Karl Denninger American businessman

Apple (and America's) Chinese Slave Labor Problem http://financialsense.com/contributors/karl-denninger/2012/01/23/apple-and-america-chinese-slave-labor-problem in Financial Sense (23 January 2012)

Decision

“… let's all remember that we have a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people", and there are very few people in our government that you can't buy.”

Pat Paulsen (1927–1997) United States Marine

Archived at "Congressional Ethics" http://www.paulsen.com/congress.html, Paulsen.com, January 12, 1968

People

“Print created national uniformity and government centralism, but also individualism and opposition to government as such.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 267

“Governments tend to expand their power to the point that they do harm. In SurvivalBlog, I often warn of the insidious tyranny of the Nanny State… …If the state where you live becomes oppressive, then don’t hesitate to relocate. Vote with your feet!”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York (2009), p. 14.

“The Faerie Queene is the most extended and extensive meditation on sex in the history of poetry. It charts the entire erotic spectrum, a great chain of being rising from matter to spirit, from the coarsest lust to chastity and romantic idealism. The poem’s themes of sex and politics are parallel: the psyche, like society, must be disciplined by good government. Spenser agrees with the classical and Christian philosophers on the primacy of reason over animal appetites. He looks forward to the Romantic poets, however, in the way that he shows the sex impulse as ultimately daemonic and barbaric, breeding witches and sorcerers of evil allure. Like the Odyssey, The Faerie Queene is a heroic epic in which the masculine must evade female traps or delays.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 188

Sex, Way, History, Evil

“The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments but where, I trust in God, it will always remain, in the hands of the people.”

Tench Coxe (1755–1824) American economist

Source: http://www.friesian.com/quotes.htm Pennsylvania Gazette], Feb. 20, 1788.

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/41022229, archived image from newspapers.com, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788 page 2 column 2

God, People

“The scientist tries to understand the origin of our solar system, the structure of the universe and the laws governing the atom. He has discovered X rays, the radioactive substances, and he has built cyclotrons. He has foreseen the existence of electromagnetic and electronic waves. Out of his thought has grown the technique of our century. But not until today has he begun to notice that the earth on which he moves is covered with sweat and with blood and that in the world in which he lives "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head."”

Leopold Infeld (1898–1968) Polish physicist

Quest: An Autobiography [1941] (second edition, 1980), Book III, "Search and Research", p. 338

World, Law, Understanding, Universe

“I deny any government, elected or not, the right to kidnap my children and ship them off to a battlefield to kill or be killed. I accept to pay taxes and that's the sum total of my debt to my government. In every other respect, my government owes me, not the other way around.Conscription is the most fundamental denial of liberty, on a par with slavery.I am not a pacifist and I support a professional army. But I oppose the draft even in times of war. If your country cannot find enough volunteers to defend itself when attacked, then it's not worth defending.”

Bernard Chazelle (1955) French computer scientist

"If You Want a Draft, Draft Yourself!," http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002495.html A Tiny Revolution (2008-08-16)

War, Children, Way, Support

“It needs but very little consideration to reach the conclusion that all of these terms are relative, not absolute, in their application to the affairs of this earth. There is no absolute and complete sovereignty for a State, nor absolute and complete independence and freedom for an individual. It happened in 1861 that the States of the North and the South were so fully agreed among themselves that they were able to combine against each other. But supposing each State of the Union should undertake to make its own decisions upon all questions, and that all held divergent views. If such a condition were carried to its logical conclusion, each would come into conflict with all the others, and a condition would arise which could only result in mutual destruction. It is evident that this would be the antithesis of State sovereignty. Or suppose that each individual in the assertion of his own independence and freedom undertook to act in entire disregard of the rights of others. The end would be likewise mutual destruction, and no one would be independent and no one would be free. Yet these are conflicts which have gone on ever since the organization of society into government, and they are going on now. To my mind this was fundamental of the conflict which broke out in 1861.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Question, Decision, Freedom

“On the one hand, the ruling Islamic regime has succeeded in completely repressing Iranian women. Women are forbidden to go out in public unless they are covered by clothing that conceals everything but their hands and faces. At all government institutions, universities, and airports, there are separate entrances for women, where they are searched for lipstick and other weapons of mass destruction. … Yet, while these measures are meant to render women invisible and powerless, they are paradoxically making women tremendously visible and powerful.”

Azar Nafisi (1955) Iranaian academic and writer

The New Republic (22 February 1999)

Women, Search, Universe, Clothes

“What the BJP government claims to offer, what all scholarly historians want, and what is loathed by the Marxists who have dominated the cultural and educational establishment since decades, is glasnost: openness, an end to the dead hand of Marxist dogma in Indian history-writing. However, it is quite wrong to say that the Sangh Parivar takes this job “very seriously”. It took three years before relieving leading Marxists of their influential positions (Prasar Bharati, NCERT, IHC). Most of its new nominees were not up to the job, some because of ill-health (e. g. K. S. Lal and B. R. Grover, both now deceased), some because they had never functioned in an academic setting. It should not be forgotten that for decades, at least since ca. 1970 when the Marxists led by P. N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan were given a lot of effective power in this sector in return for their support to Indira Gandhi, distinctly non-Marxist young historians found their access to an academic career blocked by the Marxist hegemons. Of the new textbooks, some are impeccable and are welcomed as undeniable improvements, e. g. Meenakshi Jain’s presentation of the Muslim period, arguably the most sensitive and controversial part of the series. Some of the others, by contrast, have been criticized or ridiculed even by fair-minded observers.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, The Problem with Secularism (2007)

Health, Education, History, Support

“I am determined, as is the Government, to do everything to preserve everything that we have worked for and that we believe in … by using all necessary means to fend off the hostile”

Jean-Claude Juncker (1954) Luxembourgian politician

bid
On the bids on Arcelor by Mittal, 5 February 5, 2006 What they said about the Arcelor bid"; Business Times, Malaysia
2006

Hostility

“It is not by the consolidation or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1829) edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, p. 70
Posthumous publications

“That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore, that no government separate from, or independent of the government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Article 14
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

People

“Government by inquisition has never been good. However, since January 1979, our country has been under the yoke of inquisitorial power. Five centuries after the Spanish Inquisition, Iran is living under the terror of a new Torquemada who is more pitiless and more sinister than its predecessor. In fact the Inquisition tribunals did not sentence men to be executed unless they were known to be heretics. They had the opportunity to recant and to repent; and they would call witnesses, which the Iranian Torquemada does not allow.
The tribunals are said to be Islamic. But the truth cannot be overlooked, and genuine Islamic law insists on the right of an accused man to defend himself. Islam is never served by hatred, vengeance and murder, but by justice, goodness, forgiveness and high moral standards. This explosion of hatred, supposedly "in the name of God", is an insult to God and to our religion. And this insult, I repeat, unfortunately threatens to do great harm to Islam, just as the Inquisition did great harm to Catholicism.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 209
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

Men, God, Truth, Religion

“For where's the state beneath the firmament
That doth excel the bees for government?”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

First Week, Fifth Day, Part i. Compare: "So work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in Nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom", William Shakespeare, Henry V, act i. sc. 3.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Bee

“The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

"Beyond Action and Reaction".
The Art of Being Ruled (1926)

Idea, Time, Clothes, Season

“The purpose of totalitarian parties, for which Bolshevism provided the model, was not to become the government, but to manipulate the government from behind the scenes.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), p. 39

“To the Muslims, a Hindu (and any non-Muslim) is a Kafir. A Kafir (non-believer in Islam) is not worthy of respect. He is a low born and without status. That is why a country ruled by the kafir (non-muslim) is a ‘Dar ul harb’ (i. e. the land of war) to a Muslim, which must be conquered, by any means for the Muslims and turned into ‘Dar ul Islam’ (i. e., land of Muslims alone). Given this, not further evidence seems necessary to prove that the Muslims will not obey a Hindu (or for that matter any non-Muslim) government.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), p. 301

War, Country

“Its fine if the law bans books because government won't really enforce it.”

Elena Kagan (1960) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Widely reported as having been said by Kagan during the Supreme Court oral argument in the Citizens United case in September, 2009; however, this quote does not appear in the actual transcript of the oral argument http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-205&#x5B;Reargued&#x5D;.pdf. Misattributed

Books, Law

“Under the old constitution, a secretary of the treasury for instance, had no opportunity, save by his annual reports, of presenting any scheme or plan of finance or other matter. He had no opportunity of explaining, expounding, enforcing, or defending his views of policy; his only resort was through the medium of an organ. In the British parliament, the premier brings in his budget and stands before the nation responsible for its every item. If it is indefensible, he falls before the attacks upon it, as he ought to. This will now be the case to a limited extent under our system. In the new constitution, provision has been made by which our heads of departments can speak for themselves and the administration, in behalf of its entire policy, without resorting to the indirect and highly objectionable medium of a newspaper. It is to be greatly hoped that under our system we shall never have what is known as a government organ.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Hope

“People rarely win wars, governments rarely (completely) lose them. People (do completely) get killed.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Why America must stop the war now (23 October 2001) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism8. Articles

War, People

“These Disciplines [mathematics] serve to inure and corroborate the Mind to a constant Diligence in Study; to undergo the Trouble of an attentive Meditation, and cheerfully contend with such Difficulties as lie in the Way. They wholly deliver us from a credulous Simplicity, most strongly fortify us against the Vanity of Scepticism, effectually restrain from a rash Presumption, most easily incline us to a due Assent, perfectly subject us to the Government of right Reason, and inspire us with Resolution to wrestle against the unjust Tyranny of false Prejudices. If the Fancy be unstable and fluctuating, it is to be poised by this Ballast, and steadied by this Anchor, if the Wit be blunt it is sharpened upon this Whetstone; if luxuriant it is pared by this Knife; if headstrong it is restrained by this Bridle; and if dull it is roused by this Spur. The Steps are guided by no Lamp more clearly through the dark Mazes of Nature, by no Thread more surely through the intricate Labyrinths of Philosophy, nor lastly is the Bottom of Truth sounded more happily by any other Line. I will not mention how plentiful a Stock of Knowledge the Mind is furnished from these, with what wholesome Food it is nourished, and what sincere Pleasure it enjoys. But if I speak farther, I shall neither be the only Person, nor the first, who affirms it; that while the Mind is abstracted and elevated from sensible Matter, distinctly views pure Forms, conceives the Beauty of Ideas, and investigates the Harmony of Proportions; the Manners themselves are sensibly corrected and improved, the Affections composed and rectified, the Fancy calmed and settled, and the Understanding raised and excited to more divine Contemplation. All which I might defend by Authority, and confirm by the Suffrages of the greatest Philosophers.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 31: Prefatory Oration

Pleasure, Truth, Lie, Food

“The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance… How long is this endless groveling before every cry of 'racism' going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

Buchanan's syndicated column (28 July 1993).
1990s

War, People, Cry, Country

“Men’s life expectancy was one year less than women’s in 1920; today, it is seven years less, yet the federal government has only an Office of Research on Women’s Health.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Life, Women, Men, Health

“All my adult life I have seen British governments driven off their virtuous pursuit of low inflation by market problems or political pressures. I was under no illusions when I took Britain into the ERM. I said at the time that membership was no soft option. The soft option, the devaluer's option, the inflationary option, that would in my opinion be a betrayal of Britain's future.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Robin Oakley, "Major rejects devaluation as betrayal of the future", The Times, 11 September 1992.
Speech to the Scottish CBI, 10 September 1992, six days before Black Wednesday when the Pound was forced out of the ERM.
1990s, 1992

Life, Problem, Betrayal, Time

Quotes about government page 43

Quotes about government
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