Quotes about government
page 55

“I think power is a sickness and governing is a folly for madmen.”

Robert Silverberg book Lord Valentine's Castle

Book 1, Chapter 15 (p. 113)
Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Six, The Second Question: Health, Education, and the Democratic Economy, p. 121

Teachers

“Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who need assistance through no fault of their own. But guys like McDermott don't make distinctions like that. For them, the baby Jesus wants us to "provide," no matter what the circumstance. But being a Christian, I know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not self-destructive.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2010-12-09
Keep Christ in Unemployment
BillOReilly.com
http://www.billoreilly.com/column;jsessionid=47EBD06AF914FD6B2945149104DA563F?pid=30748
2011-06-07
referring to Jim McDermott saying "This is Christmas time. We talk about good Samaritans, the poor, the little baby Jesus in the cradle and all this stuff. And then we say to the unemployed, we won't give you a check to feed your family. That's simply wrong."

People, Guy, Support, Baby

“Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.”

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

Remarks on Annual Elections (1775)

Communication

“ANARCHISM (from the Gr. ἅν, and άρχη, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary — as is seen in organic life at large — harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Kropotkin's entry on "Anarchism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html

Life, Education, Law, Communication

“The good Lord had had a chance for a long time before the abolition. I believe that there is a moral government; and that God reigns. I am no pessimist; I give thanks to the good Lord, and also to the good men through whom He has worked. Prominent among them was Garrison, and scarcely less so was Phillips. It was they and their associates who made Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party possible. What abolished slavery was the moral sentiment which had been created, not by the pulpit, but by the Garrisonian platform. The churches did not do much to abolish slavery; but they did much to keep the agitation down.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1890s, Speech at Tremont Temple (1890)

Men, God, Chance, Time

“We are paramountly concerned, like, I am sure, the bulk of the House—I am sure that the country is also concerned—about what we can do to protect those who rightly and naturally look to us for protection. So far, they have been betrayed. The responsibility for the betrayal rests with the Government. The Government must now prove by deeds—they will never be able to do it by words—that they are not responsible for the betrayal and cannot be faced with that charge. That is the charge, I believe, that lies against them. Even though the position and the circumstances of the people who live in the Falkland Islands are uppermost in our minds—it would be outrageous if that were not the case—there is the longer-term interest to ensure that foul and brutal aggression does not succeed in our world. If it does, there will be a danger not merely to the Falkland Islands, but to people all over this dangerous planet.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. 1980s

People, World, Nature, Betrayal

“Commerce in itself may favour peace, but when commerce is artificially shut out by a decree of Government from some promising territory, then commerce just as naturally favours war.”

John Robert Seeley (1834–1895) British historian

p. 110 https://books.google.com/books?id=Zsm3TLe1cAUC&pg=PA110 The Expansion of England (1883)

War, Peace, Nature

“I do not believe that people who go on strike in this country have a legitimate cause. Throughout the period of the Labour Government and this one, I have never supported any strikes in this country.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Prime Minister's Questions (22 June 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104972 First term as Prime Minister

People, Support, Country

“Hindus temples have been under unprecedented attack for a thousand years. They suffered desecration, destruction, confiscation of their property and iniquitous taxation under the Muslim rulers. Under the British, the more physical methods ceased but fiscal methods were adopted for undermining "heathenism". A large part of the land and properties of the temples were taken away under all kinds of pretexts. After independence, the temples have fared no better. Their properties have not been restored to them and they continue to exist in deepening poverty. In the South where there are still many noble structures left, the temples are under the control of a Government which takes pride in being "secular", and whose secularity is thoroughly anti-Hindu in orientation.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Suffering, Parting

“What you want is protection. You want to be safe. What the government does is to try to retaliate after the fact.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Rampart Institute (Society for Libertarian Life edition), speech from 1978, p. 14.
Does Government Protection Protect (1979)

“Next he will be foxtrotting down to the Tory party's fundraising ball, auctioning City internships for the children of the highest bidder. Is that not the Government's idea of social mobility?”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

On Nick Clegg's social mobility pledges, during a debate in the House of Commons http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8441262/Harriet-Harman-facing-questions-over-sons-internship.html, 11 April 2011.

Children, Idea

“I urge Governments to considerably reduce funds allocated to the military, not only as a disarmament issue, but also as a potential contributor to social and environmental protection and call for the holding of referenda on this issue worldwide.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations expert urges states to cut military spending and invest more in human development http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B9C2E/(httpNewsByYear_en)/D5D061E9891363C1C1257CB7003055E0?OpenDocument. 2014

“All democracies, especially in developing countries that have considerable diversities and carry the burden of developmental imbalances, have had to grapple with one paramount challenge and that is : how to harmonies’ the legitimate self – assertion of communities that suffered deprivation and dis-empowerment in the past with imperatives of good governance.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

New Delhi, January 22, 2003
Quotes from ataljee.org

Democracy, Communication, Suffering, Past

“.. include prima facie but not ipso facto the following: (a) Homosexuality or gross indecency with another male person; (b) Possession of or trading in an illegal narcotic or other drug; (c) Living upon the earnings of prostitution; (d) Membership in the Communist Party or one of its front organizations (see schedule attached); (e) “Trainism”; (f) Advocating the violent overthrow of the government; (g) Slandering the President of the United States; (h)...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

.
October “THE ROUGH DRAFT”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Personality

“Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

No. V, The House of Commons, p. 159
Cf the Gettysburg Address.
The English Constitution (1867)

People, Thinking

“Our aid has humanitarian objectives only; it is never governed by politics or limited by the geography, race, color or religion of the beneficiary.”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Quotes on Philanthropy, http://www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=99c18960a5a11310VgnVCM1000004d64a8c0RCRD&appInstanceName=default, sheikhmohammed.ae.

Religion, Color

“The Government of the fort of Kohram and of Samana was made over by the Sultan to Kutbu-d din… [who] by the aid of his sword of Yemen and dagger of India became established in independent power over the countries of Hind and Sind' He purged by his sword the land of Hind from the filth of infidelity and vice, and freed the whole of that country from the thorn of God-plurality, and the impurity of idol-worship, and by his royal vigour and intrepidity, left not one temple standing”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Kuhram and Samana (Punjab) . Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 216-217 . Also partially quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

God, Country

“Under the leadership of their democratic governments, all the anti-Japanese people in the Liberated Areas of China are called upon to join organizations of workers, peasants, youth and women, and cultural, professional and other organizations, which will wholeheartedly perform various tasks in support of the armed forces. Those tasks are not limited to rallying the people to join the army, transporting grain for it, caring for soldiers' families and helping the troops in meeting their material needs. They also include mobilizing the guerrilla units, militia and self-defence corps to make widespread raids and lay land mines against the enemy, gather intelligence about him, comb out traitors and spies, transport and protect the wounded and take direct part in the army's operations.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

Women, People, Youth, Family

“People are also more keenly and painfully aware that a large part of the Church is in one way or another linked to those who wield economic and political power in today's world…. Under these circumstances, can it honestly be said that the Church does not interfere in "the temporal sphere"? Is the Church fulfilling a purely religious role when by its silence or friendly relationships it lends legitimacy to a dictatorial and oppressive government?”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Source: A Theology of Liberation (1971), p. 65

People, World, Way, Silence

“The Public Administration neither comprises nor heads any branch of government but is subordinate to all three of them. Like Congress, president, and courts, the Public Administration makes its distinctive contribution in a manner consistent with its peculiar place, which is one of subordination.”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

John Rohr (1990) "The constitutional case for public administration." In G. L. Wamsley et al. (eds.), Refounding public administration, Sage. p. 80

“The individualistic conception of the State as some external authority exercising a malign influence upon the life of the community is a travesty of fact. The State is that form of organised society which has evolved through the process of the ages, and represents the aptitude for freedom and self-government to which any people has attained. The policeman and the soldier, for example, who are at the call of the landlord or the employer when tenant or workman becomes turbulent, exist by the will and under the express authority of those same tenants and workmen, who constitute a preponderating majority in the State, and without whose consent neither soldier nor policeman could continue to exist.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 6-7

Life, People, Age, Exercises

“German reunification could not have been achieved if the Hungarian government did not open its border with Austria to provide an exit route for the East German people.”

Thae Yong-ho (1961) former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea

Remarks to the U.S. Congress (November 2017)

People

“Now let's get talking: reefer madness. Like some arrogant government can't,
By any stretch of the imagination, outlaw a plant.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Evolve
Song lyrics

Imagination, Madness

“If it has been revealed to man that the Almighty made him out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, it is in vain to tell a Christian that man was originally a speck of albumen, and passed through the stages of monads and monkeys, before he attained his present intellectual preeminence. If it be a received truth that the Creator has repeatedly interposed in the government of the universe and displayed his immediate agency in miraculous interpositions, it is an insult to any reader to tell him that the being slumbers on his throne and rules under a "primal arrangement in his counsels," and "by a code of laws of unbending operation."”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

Life, Truth, Law, Universe

“More important than these two considerations was the fact that Russia was at no time concerned with the two policies ‑ the forcing of opium on China and the trade in human flesh ‑ which both the people and Government of China resented and which brought her untold humiliation. … In the `pig trade' ‑ that is, the forcible transportation of Chinese workers to plantations and mines again, in defiance of the orders of Government and of the protests of the people ‑ in this new slave trade, where sometimes forty per cent of those transported died on the way, all Western Powers including America were deeply involved. Russia, for whatever reason, was no party to it. It was these two, the `poison trade' and the `pig trade', that made the iron enter the soul of the Chinese and made them bitterly anti‑foreign.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

People, Way, Soul, Time

“The creation of Pakistan is not the end of this problem. H. S. Suhrawardy said in 1946 that Pakistan was 'not the last but only the latest demand' of Indian Muslims…. He recommended the creation of a number of 'Muslim-majority pockets' in India. The birth of the Mallapuram district is therefore only a sign of further demands to come. …. The relaxation, on the eve of a mid-term poll, of the service rules enjoining monogamy on Central Government servants whose religion permitted polygamy was effected by the Government of India under the pressure of these organizations.”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

Quoted in B. Madhok: Indianisation, and quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2014). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa.p. 364-6

Religion, Birth, Problem

“The odd thing is not that we are in the business of overthrowing other people's governments, but that we can still be surprised when somebody reminds us of it. In Asia, in Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East we have been propping up and knocking down governments more or less openly for the past twenty-five years.
It is an established policy. Everybody knows it. It is supposed to be done covertly, which is only sensible if you hope to succeed since publicity in matters of this sort can only make the natives restless and defeat the project. Imagine the chauvinistic rallying around President Nixon that would have occurred if Canada, say, had announced that her agents were going to destabilize United States society so that discontented Americans could heave the Nixon Administration out of office.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Our Uncle Is Now Dorian Sam" (p.93)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

People, Hope, Imagination, Business

“[What worried him most was that the Indian Muslims were appointed to] “high offices and are successful in their work… they will make people of their own kind their helpers, supporters, colleagues. They will not allow (Turkish) nobles and free-born men and men of merits to come anywhere near the affairs of the government.””

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they. Chapter 2.
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

Men, People, Support, Success

“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375 (1927), at 375. In this case, in which the Court upheld a California anti-Communist statute, Brandeis, writing in a concurrence joined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concurred in the judgment but not in the reasoning. Whitney was later overruled (with the later Court adopting Brandeis's reasoning) in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
Judicial opinions

Men, Happiness, People, Truth

“It is but natural that such a design should begin with George Washington, for with him begins that which is truly characteristic of America. He represents our independence, our Constitution, our liberty. He formed the highest aspirations that were entertained by any people into the permanent institutions of our Government. He stands as the foremost disciple of ordered liberty, a statesman with an inspired vision who is not outranked by any mortal greatness.”

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

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

People, Nature

“Donald Trump is right. We are at war and our homeland security and immigration policies are a complete mess. The Syrian refugee issue and the Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have kick-started a much needed debate and have brought some alarming information to the American people. It starts with basic government incompetence and the suffocating PC culture that Republican and Democrat establishment leaders are slaves to along with the liberal media.”

David Bossie (1965) American political activist

Conservatives Should Think Bigger On Immigration Ban http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/11/conservatives-should-think-bigger-on-immigration-ban/ (December 11, 2015)

War, People

“The singleton hypothesis is that Earth-originating intelligent life will (eventually) form a singleton. It is an open question whether the singleton hypothesis is true. My own opinion is that it is more likely true than not. Historically, we have seen an overarching trend towards the emergence of higher levels of social organization, from hunter-gatherer bands, to chiefdoms, city-states, nation states, and now multinational organizations, regional alliances, various international governance structures, and other aspects of globalization. Extrapolation of this trend points to the creation of a singleton.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

What is a Singleton? https://nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html (2005)

Life, Intelligence, Question

“Central to Jewish mysticism is the role that vegetarianism plays in messianic expectations: here vegetarianism functions in the concept of Jewish mystical time which chronicles human development from the vegetarian state in the Garden of Eden to the Messianic age when it is believed we will be vegetarians again. … in Judaism the laws governing responsibility to animals derive from the animal's place in the divine economy, assured by the covenantal statements, by the Jewish view of creation, and the Jewish view of a just and compassionate Creator. The stress of these laws with respect to the Jew is summed up in the question: How should the righteous (just) Jew behave toward animals, and the answer lies in the concept of the “imitatio Dei.””

Roberta Kalechofsky (1931) American activist

The just and merciful human behaves toward animals as a just and merciful Creator behaves toward humans. “Hierarchy, Kinship, and Responsibility: The Jewish Relationship to the Animal World,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 97 https://books.google.it/books?id=wi4n8i4YgpYC&pg=PA97-98.

Age, Law, Question, Time

“People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't understand, in the hands, that is, of the government, of the clerical party, of the capitalists.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter XXVI, p. 149

Men, People, Understanding

“The real reason for withholding taxes is the unwillingness of workers to share their incomes with the government and the consequent difficulties of collection. To overcome this handicap, the government has simply impressed employers into its service as involuntary and unpaid tax collectors. It is a form of conscription. Disregarding the right of privacy, which is an essential of liberty, the government’s agents may, under the law, invade the employer’s office, demand his accounts, and punish him for any infraction which they believe he has committed; they can impound his property and inflict a penalty for not having collected taxes for the government.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 43

Law, Penalty

“As long as they (government) make businesses grow in the country, as long as we collect more taxes, as long as we use those taxes efficiently, I think the confidence will come back, every one will be very happy with whatever government is in the Centre and we will be better country.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy (1946) Indian businessman

Narayana Murthy shocks with 'Mera Bharat Mahaan' quote, indicates Infosys Ltd on hiring spree, 16k jobs on offer

Happiness, Confidence, Business, Thinking

“Government seems unaware that the more race-based measures it tries to put in place the faster that time bomb burns to detonation point.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Guest speech to the conference of the Fiji Labour Party, Lautoka, 30 July 2005

Time

“What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 455

“We have here the problem of bigness. Its lesson should by now have been burned into our memory by Brandeis. The Curse of Bigness' shows how size can become a menace – both industrial and social. It can be an industrial menace because it creates gross inequalities against existing or putative competitors. It can be a social menace – because of its control of prices. Control of prices in the steel industry is powerful leverage on our economy. For the price of steel determines the price of hundreds of other articles. Our price level determines in large measure whether we have prosperity or depression – an economy of abundance or scarcity. Size in steel should therefore be jealously watched. In final analysis, size in steel is the measure of the power of a handful of men over our economy. That power can be utilized with lightning speed. It can be benign or it can be dangerous. The philosophy of the Sherman Act is that it should not exist. For all power tends to develop into a government in itself. Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy. Industrial power should be decentralized. It should be scattered into many hands so that the fortunes of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men. The fact that they are not vicious men but respectable and social minded is irrelevant. That is the philosophy and the command of the Sherman Act. It is founded on a theory of hostility to the concentration in private hands of power so great that only a government of the people should have it.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, United States v. Columbia Steel Co., 334 U.S. 495 (1948)
Judicial opinions

Men, Hostility, People, Problem

“We’re going to refinance everyone’s existing student debt, 40 million Americans have student debt. … Under my plan, you will be able to also lower your debt, move into a program to pay it back as a percentage of your income and more than that, my plan for debt-free tuition at public colleges and universities will eventually eliminate any student debt. But for people who have it, I’m going to put a date certain that after a certain number of years, you no longer have to pay anything. The government has to quit making money off of lending money to young people to get their education.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money, People, Education, Universe

“I have a message for the terrorists trying to kill our citizens: we will find you, we will destroy you, and we will win. This is not only a military fight, but we will also require cyberwarfare and financial warfare. It is also an ideological fight. We will confront directly the hateful ideology of Radical Islam — and promote American values, and American culture, and America's system of government.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech in Jackson, Mississippi (August 24, 2016)

Hate, Fight

“"We cannot do the role of cheerleaders. We strive to provide objective feedback on the functioning of the various departments of the government." - Vinod Rai speaking at the inaugural function of a Conference of Accountants General.”

Vinod Rai (1948) Comptroller and Auditor General of India

CAG: We can’t don the role of cheerleaders http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/cag-we-can-t-don-the-role-of-cheerleaders/1013949/0

“The difference between a stable society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one are external. In a stable society government ultimately becomes unnecessary; the restraints on people's actions are internal, they're self-disciplined…”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

People

“The special harm attaching to prior restraint is that the government can keep materials from reaching the public, so there can be no accountability, no judgment by the people that the power to suppress was wrongly exercised.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Six, Freedom Of Expression, p. 207

People, Exercises

“Mandela has walked a long road and now stands at the top of the hill. A traveler would sit down and admire the view. But a man of destiny knows that beyond this hill lies another and another. The journey is never complete. As he contemplates the next hill I hold out my hand in friendship and in cooperation. I should like to make clear that I believe that my political task is just beginning. Everything that we have done so far - the four years of difficult and often frustrating negotiations, the problems and the crises - have been simply a preparation for the work that lies ahead. The greatest challenge which we will face in the government of national unity will be to defend and nurture our new constitution. Our greatest task will be to ensure our young and vulnerable democracy will take root and flourish.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

Concession speech (1994), as quoted in "De Klerk: 'My Political Task Is Just Beginning'" https://web.archive.org/web/20180920124105/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/05/03/de-klerk-my-political-task-is-just-beginning/ccdb96c6-5a8f-48d9-9872-3e016b4ee287/?utm_term=.bf09056315ad (3 May 1994), Reuters 1990s, 1994

Friendship, Travel, Democracy, Problem

“The civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 379–383.
Collected Works

War, People, Way, History

“In 1932 many dark clouds still hung round the horizon. In 1933, although the outlook was distinctly brighter, there was no settled feeling that we were about to enjoy a spell of fine weather. To-day the atmosphere is distinctly brighter. The events of the last 12 months have shown gratifying evidence that the efforts of His Majesty's Government are bearing fruit…If you look to what I might call the telltale statistics, the unemployment figures and statistics of such things as retail trade, consumption of electricity, transport, iron and steel production and house building, in every case you see a definite revival of activity…If I might borrow an illustration from the titles of two well-known works of fiction, I would say that we have now finished the story of "Bleak House" and that we are sitting down this afternoon to enjoy the first chapter of "Great Expectations."”

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

Budget speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1934/apr/17/financial-statement in the House of Commons (17 April 1934) Chancellor of the Exchequer

Feeling, Effort, Housing, Weather

“Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy will be redeemed when the people have taken back their government from the criminal alliance of Communists, Socialists, New Dealers and the Eisenhower-Dewey Republicans.”

George Reisman (1937) American economist

"One Enchanted Evening" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936247,00.html, Time Magazine (Aug. 9, 1954)

People

“The civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825), p. 74

Life, Truth, World, Exercises

“I believe the time is coming when this question must be laid hold of by a Government, and that Parliament will feel that it dare not treat it in future as it has treated it in the past. These great meetings, as Mr. Mill very justly said, were not meetings so much for discussion as they were meetings for demonstration of opinion, and, if you like, I will add for exhibition of force. (Cheers.) Such exhibitions, if they be despised and disregarded may become exhibitions of another kind of force…I have been insulted in past times…that I was in favour of peace at any price…I believe that however much any of us may abhor the thought that political questions in any country should ever again be settled by force, yet there is something in the constitution of our nature that when these evils are allowed to run on beyond a certain period unredressed, that the most peace-loving of men are unable to keep the peace. (Hear, hear.) And bear this in mind,—that, however much we may wish political questions to be settled by moral means, yet it is no more immoral for a people to use force in the last resort for the obtaining and the securing of freedom than it is for a Government by force to suppress and deny that freedom.”

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

Loud cheers, the audience rising.
Speech in Manchester (25 September 1866), quoted in The Times (26 September 1866), p. 9.
1860s

Love, Men, People, Peace

“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough. …it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

"Jonathan Franzen Warns Ebooks are Corroding Values," The Guardian (Jan 30, 2012).

World, Justice, Way, Feeling

“Beware! By Allah the son of Abu Quhafah (Abu Bakr) dressed himself with it (the caliphate) and he certainly knew that my position in relation to it was the same as the position of the axis in relation to the hand-mill. The flood water flows down from me and the bird cannot fly upto me. I put a curtain against the caliphate and kept myself detached from it.
Then I began to think whether I should assault or endure calmly the blinding darkness of tribulations wherein the grown up are made feeble and the young grow old and the true believer acts under strain till he meets Allah (on his death). I found that endurance thereon was wiser. So I adopted patience although there was pricking in the eye and suffocation (of mortification) in the throat. I watched the plundering of my inheritance till the first one went his way but handed over the Caliphate to Ibn al-Khattab after himself.
(Then he quoted al-A`sha's verse):
My days are now passed on the camel's back (in difficulty) while there were days (of ease) when I enjoyed the company of Jabir's brother Hayyan.
It is strange that during his lifetime he wished to be released from the caliphate but he confirmed it for the other one after his death. No doubt these two shared its udders strictly among themselves. This one put the Caliphate in a tough enclosure where the utterance was haughty and the touch was rough. Mistakes were in plenty and so also the excuses therefore. One in contact with it was like the rider of an unruly camel. If he pulled up its rein the very nostril would be slit, but if he let it loose he would be thrown. Consequently, by Allah people got involved in recklessness, wickedness, unsteadiness and deviation.
Nevertheless, I remained patient despite length of period and stiffness of trial, till when he went his way (of death) he put the matter (of Caliphate) in a group and regarded me to be one of them. But good Heavens! what had I to do with this "consultation"? Where was any doubt about me with regard to the first of them that I was now considered akin to these ones? But I remained low when they were low and flew high when they flew high. One of them turned against me because of his hatred and the other got inclined the other way due to his in-law relationship and this thing and that thing, till the third man of these people stood up with heaving breasts between his dung and fodder. With him his children of his grand-father, (Umayyah) also stood up swallowing up Allah's wealth like a camel devouring the foliage of spring, till his rope broke down, his actions finished him and his gluttony brought him down prostrate.
At that moment, nothing took me by surprise, but the crowd of people rushing to me. It advanced towards me from every side like the mane of the hyena so much so that Hasan and Husayn were getting crushed and both the ends of my shoulder garment were torn. They collected around me like the herd of sheep and goats. When I took up the reins of government one party broke away and another turned disobedient while the rest began acting wrongfully as if they had not heard the word of Allah saying:
That abode in the hereafter, We assign it for those who intend not to exult themselves in the earth, nor (to make) mischief (therein); and the end is (best) for the pious ones. (Qur'an, 28:83)
Yes, by Allah, they had heard it and understood it but the world appeared glittering in their eyes and its embellishments seduced them. Behold, by Him who split the grain (to grow) and created living beings, if people had not come to me and supporters had not exhausted the argument and if there had been no pledge of Allah with the learned to the effect that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed I would have cast the rope of Caliphate on its own shoulders, and would have given the last one the same treatment as to the first one. Then you would have seen that in my view this world of yours is no better than the sneezing of a goat.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha

Death, Hunger, Children, People

“The Japanese army is now prepared to use every means within its power to subdue its opponents. The objectives of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces are, as clearly set forth in statements issued by the Japanese Government, not only to protect the vested interests of Japan and the lives and property of the Japanese residents in the affected area, but also to scourge the Chinese Government and army who have een pursuing anti-foreign and anti-Japanese policies in collaboration with Communist influences.”

Iwane Matsui (1878–1948) Japanese general

Quoted in "Shanghai's Undeclared War" - by George C. Bruce - 1937 - Page 54.

“The framers of our Constitution came up with two major contributions to the art of government. The first was the idea of an executive not dependent on the political support of the legislature. The second was the idea of the judiciary independent of the executive and legislative branches.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

ibid.
Books, articles, and speeches

Art, Idea, Support, Dependency

“The Egyptian philosophers ventured on the perilous task of seeking out some analogy to the mode of operation employed by the Author of Nature in the first creation of organized beings, and they compared it to that which governs the birth of new individuals by generation.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 12
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Birth, Nature

“This proposed monopoly of political and economic power [in the form of the Dictatorship of the proletariat] was designed to do many things for the good of humanity, but experience has proven them to be false dreams. For example, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was designed to spread the enjoyment of wealth among the people by abolishing private property and putting all means of production in the hands of the government. Why did they want to do this? They said it was to prevent all property and wealth from falling into the hands of private capitalists. But what happened when the Communists attempted to do this in Russia? It destroyed what little division of wealth there was and sent the economy hurtling back in the direction of feudalism - an economic system under which a few privileged persons dispense the necessities of life by arbitrary determination while at the same time dictating the way in which all important phases of life shall be lived by the citizens.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Life, People, Dreams, Way

“…On the return of Moozuffur Khan to Guzerat, he learnt that in the western Puttun district the Ray of Jehrend, an idolater, refused allegiance to the Mahomedan authority. To this place Moozuffur Khan accordingly marched, and exacted tribute. He then proceeded to Somnat, where having destroyed all the Hindoo temples which he found standing, he built mosques in their stead; and leaving learned men for the propagation of the faith, and his own officers to govern the country, returned to Puttun in the year AH 798 (AD 1395).”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Muzaffar Shãh I of Gujarat (AD 1392-1410)Somnath (Gujarat)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Men, Faith, Learning, Country

“…the central doctrine of Conservatism, that it is better to endure almost any political evil than to risk a breach of the historic continuity of government.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 135, 1873, p. 544
1870s

Evil

“The south repudiates the idea that a pecuniary dependence on the federal government is one of the legitimate means of holding the states together. A moneyed interest in the government is essentially a base interest; and just so far as it operates to bind the feelings of those who are subjected to it to the government,—just so far as it operates in creating sympathies and interests that would not otherwise exist,—is it opposed to all the principles of free government, and at war with virtue and patriotism. Sir, the link which binds the public creditors, as such, to their country, binds them equally to all governments, whether arbitrary or free. In a free government, this principle of abject dependence, if extended through all the ramifications of society, must be fatal to liberty.”

Robert Hayne (1791–1839) American politician

Hayne's Speech on Mr. Foot's Resolution, January 21, 1830, page 9.

Money, War, Feeling, Idea

“But before we attempt to set ourselves up as exponents of universal reform, it would be wise to remember that progress is of slow growth, and also to remember that moderation, patience, forbearance, and charity are virtues in their own right. The only action which can be effective in the long run is that which helps others to help themselves. Before we assume too great responsibilities in the governing of others, it would be the part of wisdom very completely to discharge our responsibilities for governing ourselves. A large amount of work has to be done at home before we can start in on the neighbors, and very considerable duties have to be performed in America before we undertake the direction of the rest of the world. But we must at all times do the best we can for ourselves without forgetting others, and the best we can for our own country without forgetting other nations.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Wisdom, World, Home, Universe

“If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade a real change-maker represents a real threat. So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two- dimensional, they’re easy to absorb. Life in the real world is complicated and real change is hard. And a lot of people even think it’s boring.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

Life, People, World, Cars

“If I announce the armistice and the Americans don't send sufficient reinforcements and don't land near Rome, the Germans will seize the city and put in a puppet fascist government.”

Pietro Badoglio (1871–1956) Italian general during both World Wars and a Prime Minister of Italy

Quoted in "A Special Mission" - Page 9 - by Dan Kurzman - Political Science - 2007

“[B]ending the system to the idea that the government in Washington should see the country as a bunch of competing racial and ethnic groups with no particular or meaningful attachment to place and community, whose only relationship to government is unmediated through state and local government, is precisely the sort of thinking that Arthur Schlesinger lamented… If it makes you sad that California doesn’t have more clout in the Senate, fine. But playing statistical games based on race and ethnicity is a pernicious way of approaching that problem.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Say No to a Parliament of Tribes (2018)

Sadness, Way, Game, Communication

“(Woman on telephone) Yes of course if you were imprisoned in a foreign land by a right-wing junta and our government was unresponsive to your plight, I would organize demonstrations and move heaven and earth for your release, but I'm not going to pick you up at the airport.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 110

“Though Bernie is exhausted and has given up on his revolution, many of his voters still want to keep up the fight. I expect that millions of Bernie voters will refuse to vote for Hillary because of her support for the War in Iraq, the invasion of Libya, NAFTA and TPP, and of course because she is totally bought and sold by special interests. She and her husband have been paid millions and millions by global corporations and powerful interests who will control her every decision. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings. We welcome with open arms all voters who want an honest government and to fix our rigged system so it works for the people. This includes fixing one of Bernie's biggest issues, our terrible trade deals that strip our country of its jobs and wealth.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

How Donald Trump Beat Reddit http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/donald-trump-reddit-ama-ask-me-anything/493361/, The Atlantic (July 28, 2016) 2010s, 2016, July

War, People, Support, Decision

“Look, Jeyaretnam can't win the infighting. I'll tell you why. WE are in charge. Every government ministry and department is under our control. And in the infighting, he will go down for the count every time… I will make him crawl on his bended knees, and beg for mercy.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

1981, as recounted by former President C. V. Devan Nair, as quoted in Beyond suspicion?: the Singapore judiciary, Francis T. Seow http://www.singapore-window.org/sw99/90321dn.htm 1980s

Time

“The aggression of the Zionist entity against the nuclear reactor on 7 June 1981 will not stop the course of scientific and technical progress in Iraq. Rather, it is an additional strong stimulus to develop this course, and to provide it with even greater resources and with more effective protection. Despite our loss, this aggression confirms that Iraq really stands on the right path, offering the Arab nation a model and helping its governments to define the right or the best approach. This would open before us, the Arabs, brighter prospects for the future. It confirms what we have always said, that the long conflict between the Arab nation and Zionism will eventually result in our victory. The Arab nation expresses the right and the forward movement of history while the Zionist entity expresses aggression, crime and racialist and expansionist theories which the free peoples have renounced as part of the hated colonial past, and which has to end despite all resources at its disposal and the efforts by imperialism to keep it alive.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Hate, People, History, Effort

“Like a lusty child, government with us has expanded in nature and grown great in stature, but has also become awkward in movement… English and American political history has been a history, not of administrative development, but of legislative oversight-not of progress in governmental organization, but of advance in law-making and political criticism… We go on criticising when we ought to be creating.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Source: 1880s, "The Study of Administration," 1887, p. 203; as cited in: Dimock (1937;28)

Law, History, Nature

“[Fox] exhibited two pictures of this country; the one representing her at the end of the last glorious war, the other at the present moment. At the end of the last war this country was raised to a most dazzling height of splendour and respect. The French marine was in a manner annihilated, the Spanish rendered contemptible; the French were driven from America; new sources of commerce were opened, the old enlarged; our influence extended to a predominance in Europe, our empire of the ocean established and acknowledged, and our trade filling the ports and harbours of the wondering and admiring world. Now mark the degradation and the change, We have lost thirteen provinces of America; we have lost several of our Islands, and the rest are in danger; we have lost the empire of the sea; we have lost our respect abroad and our unanimity at home; the nations have forsaken us, they see us distracted and obstinate, and they leave us to our fate. Country! …This was your situation, when you were governed by Whig ministers and by Whig measures, when you were warmed and instigated by a just and a laudable cause, when you were united and impelled by the confidence which you had in your ministers, and when they were again strengthened and emboldened by your ardour and enthusiasm. This is your situation, when you are under the conduct of Tory ministers and a Tory system, when you are disunited, disheartened, and have neither confidence in your ministers nor union among yourselves; when your cause is unjust and your conductors are either impotent or treacherous.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1781), reprinted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume I (1815), p. 429.
1780s

Fate, War, World, Home

“Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Craig Modderno, "Newman remains animated at 81," http://www.thestandard.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=7&art_id=20553&sid=8363925&con_type=1&d_str=20060612&fc=2 Reuters (2006-06-12)

“I don't know by whom we might be threatened. What I do know is a government [sic] we have to be prepared for any eventuality, and I do know that possessions of those nuclear weapons has kept the peace between nuclear powers far better than the possession of conventional weapons did. You know when we only had conventional weapons Europe was at war again with 21–22 years. We have had 38 years peace and in another four or five years we will have the longest period of peace in Europe for centuries. That, to me, is the greatest prize of all, and…I'm prepared to allocate that expenditure to keep peace for the people for whom I'm responsible.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Granada TV (1 June 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105096 First term as Prime Minister

War, People, Peace

“The H-1B visa racket is, however, a taxpayer-subsidized, grant of government privilege. Duly, profits remain private property. The costs of accommodating an annual human influx are socialized, borne by the bewildered community.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“ Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking https://constitution.com/tax-breaks-wont-stop-high-tech-h-1b-human-trafficking/,” Constitution.com, November 16, 2017.” 2010s, 2017

Communication

“Hope nothing from foreign governments. They will never be really willing to aid you until you have shown that you are strong enough to conquer without them.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

Life and Writings, Young Italy; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 333

Hope, Strong

“A religious minority is a law unto itself. The institutions run by it enjoy protection both from their staff as well as from the Government. Their properties are safe and their management secure from Government intervention, very unlike institutions run by Hindus which enjoy no such protection and which are subject to all kinds of interference from a Government which takes pride in being ‘secular’, and which has developed aversion of secularity informed by anti-Hindu animus. The Indian Express reports ( 28/29 January, ’86 ) that the famous temple of Lord Venkateswara at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh has been ordered to pay rupees twenty crores as tax on the “sales” of prasadam since 1975! The Aurangzebi spirit is very much alive. Favoured treatment and discriminatory taxes have been used by Governments in the past to promote particular culture-groups and destroy others.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ramakrishna Mission. (1986). Ramakrishna Mission: In search of a new identity.

Law, Past

“Ignoring the restrictions which the United States imposed upon itself in conducting the war in Indochina, some observers have seen in the outcome some special military genius on the side of North Vietnam. They have in large measure attributed that alleged genius to my apparent counterpart, Vo Nyugen Giap. In reality, Giap was hardly my counterpart, for my position was never so exalted as Giap's. While he was apparently an influential member of his country's government, I was a field commander restricted to decisions and actions within the boundaries of South Vietnam, subject to the dictates of my country's government, and influential in policy matters only to the extent that Washington chose to act on my recommendations. Yet since Giap was for long his own field commander, there was enough direct confrontation between the two of us to enable me to some degree to analyze and judge his military performance.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 404.

War, Reality, Decision, Country

“On the ground of the class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it we are lost, because we are no longer socialists. The strength and power of socialism rests in the fact that we are leading a class struggle; that the laboring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms, which will put an end to class government and class exploitation, are impossible.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“(referring to people in favor of commercializing the Internet)"I suppose their thinking is that since ideas can be dangerous, there should be limits on which ideas are expressed. Which is only the foundation of fascism. Thanks, government!"”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=060425

People, Idea, Thinking

“I recommend that you provide the resources to carry forward, with full vigor, the great health and education programs that you enacted into law last year. I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on poverty. I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid program, designed to make a maximum attack on hunger and disease and ignorance in those countries that are determined to help themselves, and to help those nations that are trying to control population growth. I recommend that you make it possible to expand trade between the United States and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in America. I recommend that you attack the wasteful and degrading poisoning of our rivers, and, as the cornerstone of this effort, clean completely entire large river basins. I recommend that you meet the growing menace of crime in the streets by building up law enforcement and by revitalizing the entire federal system from prevention to probation. I recommend that you take additional steps to insure equal justice to all of our people by effectively enforcing nondiscrimination in federal and state jury selection, by making it a serious federal crime to obstruct public and private efforts to secure civil rights, and by outlawing discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. I recommend that you help me modernize and streamline the federal government by creating a new Cabinet-level Department of Transportation and reorganizing several existing agencies. In turn, I will restructure our civil service in the top grades so that men and women can easily be assigned to jobs where they are most needed, and ability will be both required as well as rewarded. I will ask you to make it possible for members of the House of Representatives to work more effectively in the service of the nation through a constitutional amendment extending the term of a Congressman to four years, concurrent with that of the President. Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked in order to earn it. We will continue to meet the needs of our people by continuing to develop the Great Society. Last year alone the wealth that we produced increased $47 billion, and it will soar again this year to a total over $720 billion. Because our economic policies have produced rising revenues, if you approve every program that I recommend tonight, our total budget deficit will be one of the lowest in many years. It will be only $1.8 billion next year. Total spending in the administrative budget will be $112.8 billion. Revenues next year will be $111 billion. On a cash basis—which is the way that you and I keep our family budget—the federal budget next year will actually show a surplus. That is to say, if we include all the money that your government will take in and all the money that your government will spend, your government next year will collect one-half billion dollars more than it will spend in the year 1967. I have not come here tonight to ask for pleasant luxuries or for idle pleasures. I have come here to recommend that you, the representatives of the richest nation on earth, you, the elected servants of a people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe, you bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Women, Men, Money

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

The Law (1850)

Education, Religion, Spring, Idea

“You have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.”

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

" Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html", The Times, May 18, 2005 Testimony before the US Senate on May 17, 2005.

War

“On the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government: I think it should be made clear that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, they have not got into bed together; they are merely sharing a room.”

Gyles Brandreth (1948) British writer, broadcaster and former Member of Parliament

The News Quiz series 72, episode 1 (BBC Radio 4, 24 September 2010).

Thinking

“Queen Victoria on promotion of Lionel Rothschild to peerage: "It is not only the feeling, of which she cannot divest herself, against making a person of the Jewish religion, a Peer; but she cannot think that one who owes his great wealth to contracts with foreign Governments for Loans, or to successful speculation on the Stock Exchange, can fairly claim a British Peerage. However high Sir L. Rothschild may stand personally in public estimation, this seems to her not less a species of gambling because it is on a gigantic scale and far removed from that legitimate trading which she delights to honour, in which men have raised themselves by patient industry and unswerving probity to positions of wealth and influence."”

Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819–1901) British monarch who reigned 1837–1901

Gentile folly: the Rothschilds, by Arnold Leese.

Men, Religion, Feeling, Thinking

“There must be a solidifying of our populations into one compact whole. The various indigenous tribes must be brought into the body politic, taught the duties and responsibilities of civilized government. Into them must be infused or inculcated an appreciative knowledge and understanding of hopes and aspirations of the Fathers who established this nation. There should be no words known in our National Vocabulary of Speech or even of thought as "Americo-Liberian"; "the country-man"; "the new-comer"; "the Sierra Leone man"; or such like terms of designating the various elements of our population.”

Charles D. B. King (1875–1961) President of Liberia

Third Inaugural Address (January 2, 1928)

Hope, Understanding, Knowledge, Country

“Government is carried on in this country more cleanly, I believe, than in any country of the world. It is the rarest thing in our local popular government, as in the government of our country, to find men who fall by the way and yield to temptations that may come from the direction of corruption or undue influence. There is a magnificent tradition handed down from the earliest times in this country, of public service—service for the good of all our brothers in whatever their station of life.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 20.
1934

Life, Men, World, Way

“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.”

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

Coolidge's Inaugural Address (4 March 1925).
1920s

Life, Women, Men, Money

“It now only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we ourselves earnestly endeavoured to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and the moral approval of the greater part of the world. We have no quarrel with the German people, except that they allow themselves to be governed by a Nazi Government. As long as that Government exists and pursues the methods it has so persistently followed during the last two years, there will be no peace in Europe. We shall merely pass from one crisis to another, and see one country after another attacked by methods which have now become familiar to us in their sickening technique. We are resolved that these methods must come to an end. If out of the struggle we again re-establish in the world the rules of good faith and the renunciation of force, why, then even the sacrifices that will be entailed upon us will find their fullest justification.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1939/sep/01/british-note-to-germany in the House of Commons (1 September 1939) on the British ultimatum to Germany Prime Minister

People, World, Peace, Faith

“It will be, I suppose, a foolhardy Government that tries to push through legislation making knowledge of both official languages one of the qualifications for election to the House of Commons or appointment to the Senate, but maybe it will have to come to this as a price we must pay for equality of the two great language groups of our founding fathers.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 7, The Favreau tragedy, p. 134

Knowledge, Housing

“Of all Discourse, governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End, either by attaining, or by giving over.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 7, p. 30
Leviathan (1651)

Knowledge

“Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example (silly because all of the terms are seemingly obvious, yet in fact nearly impossible to adequately define) and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men [sic] are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations.”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 92

Life, Men, Happiness, Way

“Above all do not forget your duty to love yourself; do not permit the fact that you have been set apart from life in a way, been prevented from participating actively in it, and that you are superflous in the obtruse eyes of a busy world, above all, do not permit this to deprive you of your idea of yourself, as if your life, if lived in inwardness, did not have just as much meaning and worth as that of any human being in the eyes of all-wise Governance, and considerably more than the busy, busiest haste of busy-ness - busy with wasting life and losing itself.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

' Letter to Kierkegaard's cousin Hans Peter http://books.google.de/books?id=CUfkNXWLyboC&pg=PR21 (1848) 1840s

Love, Life, World, Way

“I do want to reduce the income tax and if possible, eliminate the income tax…The first thing you do is balance the budget, then reduce the size of government.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2000s

“(During the Italian crisis, about the proposal of replacing Silvio Berlusconi with Angelino Alfano, as the new Prime Minister of Italy) Replacing Berlusconi with one of his servile lackeys is unacceptable. Italy needs a credible government run by a respected & competent leader (2011-11-08”

Nouriel Roubini (1958) American economist

Quoted in: Italy crisis - Live http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-europe-15637486, BBC.co.uk).

“…he would say that he doubted whether it was possible for anyone who had not visited India, even Members of Her Majesty's Government, to realize how incredibly strong, and, at the same time, how incredibly slender, our position in India was. It was strong far beyond ordinary human strength so long as we showed ourselves capable of ruling; but it was weaker than the weakest the moment we showed the faintest indications of relaxing our grasp.”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1885/may/04/supply-vote-of-credit-report in the House of Commons (4 May 1885)

Strong, Time

“A remarkable challenge to Milosevic unfolded in the street of Belgrade in December [1996], led by three politicians who banded together in a movement called Zajedno, or the Together Movement. For weeks, hundreds of thousands of Belgrade citizens braved subfreezing weather to call for democracy. But Washington missed a chance to affect events; except for one ineffectual trip to Washington, Zajedno had no contact with senior American government officials, and the Administrations sent no senior officials to Belgrade for fear that their visits would be used by Milosevic to show support. For the first time in eighteen months, Milosevic felt no significant American pressure, and turned back towards the extreme nationalists, including Karadzic, for support. His tactical skills saved him again, and within weeks, the Together Movement was together no more, as its leaders split among themselves.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 345

Fear, Democracy, Support, Chance

“Childhood, after all, has to be an age of discovery. These are days you'll remember vividly all your life, even when you're old and forget why you came into a room. It must never be allowed to become the age of anxiety.
The anxiety has been greatly increased by this government's multiplication of exams and emphasis on starting training as a middle manager in a computer company from the age of six. Parents have made things worse by worrying unduly about exam results and seeing that their children work a great deal harder than most middle managers in computer companies.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 14 : Living with Children

Life, Children, Age, Parent

“Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register, XLVI, pp. 513-514 (31 May 1823).

People, Clothes

“I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Speech to the Constitutional Convention (28 June 1787); Manuscript notes by Franklin preserved in the Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006642.jpg Constitutional Convention of 1787

Men, God, Truth, Age

“The Queen of England has more cause to procure the preservation of the Low Countries in their ancient estate in the obedience of the house of Burgundy than any other place hath…Now if the Low Countries should either be subdued to the Spaniards or possessed by the French, England cannot continue this manner of league. For if the Spaniard shall possess this country by conquest, as otherwise they cannot, then must they also govern it as conquers—that is build in every country and special towns, forts and castles which must be kept and guarded with Spaniards…To maintain these the King must continue great taxes…and there will be no reason to stop him but he will set what tax he listeth upon the commodities of England and so shall England wax poor to make him rich. And then England will have no remedy.”

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598) English statesman

Memorandum from approximately the beginning of 1576.
Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), p. 166.

Housing, Country

“If Christianity has really come from heaven, it must renew the whole life of man; it must govern the life of nations no less than that of individuals; it must control a Christian when acting in his public and political capacity as completely as when he is engaged in the duties which belong to him as a member of a family circle.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 136.

Life, Family

Quotes about government page 55

Quotes about government
page 55