Government Quotes - Page 40

• I think it is in the interest of the people of [Serbia] that no one, not even the government, can get away with the crime, whoever the victim.

  Michael Kirby

  Thinking, People, Crime

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• The murderers of the three Bytyqi brothers, New York residents who were executed by Serbian Ministry of Interior personnel in 1999, have never been prosecuted. The U.S. government cannot accept that the murderers of three of its citizens go unpunished.

  Michael Kirby

  Brother, New York, Three

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• I appreciate our government's determination to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of the Bytyqi brothers, which Serbia's Interior Minister has rightly called 'an exceptionally serious crime,' and hope the Serbian government's pledge of full cooperation... is matched by a final accounting of their murder.

  John McCain

  Determination, Brother, Appreciate

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• Government by idea tends to take in everything, to make the whole of society obedient to the idea. Spaces not so governed are unconquered, beyond the border, unconverted, a future danger.

  Lord Acton

  Ideas, Space, Borders

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• I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down.

  Henry Adams

  Giving, Office, Privilege

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• [T]he tax code has been piling up, year after year, a symbol of everything gone wrong in America, of arrogant rulers and lost freedom, just waiting for us to pick the whole thing up and heave it away. It has to happen. Free people can put up with such laws only for so long.

  Dick Armey

  Years, Law, America

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• Government is saying to the average citizen every January 1: 'For the next five months you'll be working for us, for goals we shall determine. Is that clear? After May 5 you may look after your own needs and ambitions, but report back to us next January. Now move along.' ... If nearly half of what you make is spent by someone else, that means that half your work time is spent working for someone else. Call me a radical, but I think that comes dangerously close to being a form of indentured servitude.

  Dick Armey

  Moving, Ambition, Mean

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• The best way to understand this whole issue is to look at what the government does: it takes money from some people, keeps a bunch of it, and gives the rest to other people.

  Dave Barry

  Issues, People, Giving

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• Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Order, Atmosphere, Illusion

  Jeremy Bentham, John Bowring (1843). “Works”, p.441

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• Government should not tell you what to do unless there's a compelling public purpose.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Purpose, Should, Compelling

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• I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do.

  Christopher Bond

  Thinking, Needs, Agree

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• Asset forfeiture is a mockery of the Bill of Rights. There is no presumption of innocence, no need to prove you guilty (or even charge you with a crime), no right to a jury trial, no right to confront your accuser, no right to a court-appointed attorney (even if the government has just stolen all your money), and no right to compensation for the property that's been taken.

  Harry Browne

  Taken, Rights, Presumption Of Innocence

  Harry Browne (2000). “The Great Libertarian Offer”, Liam Works

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• I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befall this country, than be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge. If this be a just remark, it is unwise and improvident to vest in the general government a power to borrow at discretion, without any limitation or restriction.

  Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger

  Country, Debt, Vests

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• It's about food. It's about your home. It's about your life. The government is worried about all of the above. All I'm saying is you should be worried they're worried. Here's why: They're telling you that you can't take care of yourself. You can't be trusted with what you put in your mouth or what you sign on the mortgage dotted line. So they'll tell you what to put in your mouth and they'll save you from what you signed on that dotted line. Does anyone see a trend here? Personal responsibility has now become government responsibility.

  Neil Cavuto

  Home, Responsibility, Doe

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• [T]he sprawl of government into every conceivable realm of life has caused the withering of traditional institutions. Fathers become unnecessary if the government provides Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Church charities lose their mission when the government provides food, shelter and income to the poor. And the non-poor no longer feel pressed to provide aid to those in need, be they aged parents or their unfortunate neighbors-"compassion" having become the province of the state.

  Mona Charen

  Children, Father, Compassion

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• Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Effort, Patterns, Disloyalty

  "Who is Loyal to America?". "Harper's Magazine", Vol. 195, No. 1168, 1947.

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• If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men.

  Clarence Darrow

  Book, School, Men

  Clarence Darrow's remarks during The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes case in Dayton, Tennessee, July 13, 1925.

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• People who live in states have as a rule never experienced the state of nature and vice-versa, and have no practical possibility of moving from the one to the other ... On what grounds, then, do people form hypotheses about the relative merits of state and state of nature? ... My contention here is that preferences for political arrangements of society are to a large extent produced by these very arrangements, so that political institutions are either addictive like some drugs, or allergy-inducing like some others, or both, for they may be one thing for some people and the other for others.

  Anthony de Jasay

  Moving, People, Political

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• There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Home, Suggestions, Unions

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• These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence.

  William O. Douglas

  Creativity, Self Confidence, People

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• Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.

  Will Durant

  Political, Liberty, Violence

  Will Durant (2011). “The Life of Greece: The Story of Civilization”, p.205, Simon and Schuster

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• Government...may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another... The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality.

  Abe Fortas

  Religious, Neutrality, May

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• To vest a few fallible men — prosecutors, judges, jurors — with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J. S. Mill called a "moral police," is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products. If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do likewise to a work of genius.

  Jerome Frank

  Book, Eye, Writing

  "A man's reach: the philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank".

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• The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.

  Milton Friedman

  Garden, Investing, Might

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• All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Class, People, Giving

  Said on June 19, 1787. "The Records Of The Federal Convention Of 1787". Book edited by Max Farrand. Volume I, p. 299, 1937.

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