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A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1801
A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.
The ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
RONALD REAGAN, remarks to Future Farmers of America, Jul. 28, 1988
A government for protecting the coarser interests of the body, business and bread only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption to decay.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism — government.
RONALD REAGAN, Guns and Ammo, Sep. 1, 1975
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, Notes on Virginia
In theory, the government of a free people is not one which shall in all circumstances govern, but one that shall effectually govern while it is maintaining right against wrong, and shall begin to fall in pieces as soon as it begins to maintain wrong against right. No country is truly free whose constitution does not furnish the citizen with protection against the wrong-doing of other citizens, and also guarantee him against the wrong-doing of the government itself. No oppressor is so intolerable as an oppressive government; for the private oppressor acts with his own force only, while the governmental oppressor acts with the irresistible force of the whole people.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE, Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, governments tend more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class--whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, Jun. 18, 1778
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
RONALD REAGAN, attributed, The Age of Turbulence
Who knows what the hell a government is or what the hell a government does.
ANNE RICE, Memnoch the Devil
The populace must think their ruler is a greater man than they, else why should they follow him? Above all a leader must be a showman, giving his people the bread and circuses they require.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, Dune: House Atreides
Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That's right. Others come in to govern for them.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, Blood Meridian
Society is older than government. But every persisting society implies the existence of government and laws; for a society without government and laws is at once overturned by its madmen and scoundrels and lapses into barbarism.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE, Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments
Government has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, "Declaration of Rights"
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
FRANK HERBERT, Chapterhouse: Dune
- All the gang of those who rule us
- Hope our quarrels never stop
- Helping them to split and fool us
- So they can remain on top.
BERTOLT BRECHT, "Solidarity Song"
You can rule with a firm hand, or you can rule through consensus. Those with neither the strength for firmness nor the courage for consensus take refuge in the belief that they can remain somewhere in between. But that is an illusion.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
The Federal Government is rendered weak to do wrong, and powerful to do right: for, as soon as it begins to go wrong, it naturally begins to be divided against itself, and the three great wheels of its machinery exhaust their momentum, or wear each other out, in their friction against each other; while, as soon as it begins to go right, all the parts work harmoniously, and exhaust their full strength on the object of their action.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE, Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
RONALD REAGAN, remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business, Aug. 15, 1986
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
DOUGLAS ADAMS, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Most traditional governments divide people, setting them against each other to weaken the society and make it governable.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, The Butlerian Jihad
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