Great Throughts Treasury

"No government can stand which is not founded upon justice." - Aristotle NULL

"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport." - Barbara Charline Jordan

"The object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty." -

"No government can be long secure without formidable opposition." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"Whatever is found what is called a paternal government was found a State education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience [is] to commence tyranny in the nursery." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"He that has no government of himself has no enjoyment of himself." - Benjamin Whichcote

"Government can easily exist without law, but law cannot exist without government." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"A thinking reed. It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world." - Blaise Pascal

"The most striking defect of our system of government is that it divides political power and thereby conceals political responsibility." - Carl Lotus Becker

"Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it...Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike - brothers of one father and one mother, with only the sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all." - Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat

"Without the confidence of the people no government can stand." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"Tzu-lu asked about government. The Master said, “Lead them; encourage them!” Tzu-lu asked for a further maxim. The Master said, “Untiringly.”" - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"When a prince’s personal conduct is correct, his government is effective without the issuing of orders. If his personal conduct is not correct, he may issue orders, but they will not be followed." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"World government is necessary for the world... World government must be understood in the sense that it governs mankind on the basis of what all have in common and that by a common law it leads all toward peace." - Dante, full name Durante degli Alighieri, aka Dante Alighieri NULL

"Cheating thrives where unfairness reigns, along with economic anxiety. It thrives where government is the weak captive of wealthy interests and lacks the will to do justice impartially. It thrives where money and success are king, and winners are fawned over whatever their daily abuses of power." - David Callahan

"Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress, but they regard the things government does for others as socialism." - Earl Warren

"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter." - Edmund Burke

"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter....Man acts from motives relative to his interest; and not on metaphysical speculations." - Edmund Burke

"Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for, (including) the want of sufficient restraint upon their passions." - Edmund Burke

"The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience." - Edmund Burke

"The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle." - Edmund Burke

"There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom." - Edmund Burke

"All government indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act is founded on compromise and barter." - Edmund Burke

"The two Antonines... governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue... Their united reigns are possible the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government." - Edward Gibbon

"Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails." - Emma Goldman

"No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion - it is an evil government." - Eric Hoffer

"Happy are the families where the government of parents is the reign of affection, and obedience of the children the submission of love." - Francis Bacon

"It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes." - Francis Bacon

"Without controversy, learning doth make the mind of men gentle, generous, amiable and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them curlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes." - Francis Bacon

"The art of government includes the political offices; viz., 1. preservation; 2. the happiness; and 3. the enlargement of the state." - Francis Bacon

"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual." - Frank Herbert, formally Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.

"Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR

"Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR

"The future lies with those wise political leaders who realize that the great public is interested more in government than in politics." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR

"A science of economics must be developed before a science of politics can be logically formulated. Essentially, economics is the science of determining whether the interests of human beings are harmonious or antagonistic. This must be known before a science of politics can be formulated to determine the proper functions of government." - Frédéric Bastiat, fully Claude Frédéric Bastiat

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." - Frédéric Bastiat, fully Claude Frédéric Bastiat

"Men will always act according to their passions. Therefore the best government is that which inspires the nobler passions and destroys the meaner." - Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

"“Self-government” is primarily a personal morality in America, not a political philosophy... Thus does our individualism reduce social problems, always, to the level of private morality, to things outside the scope of legislation." - Garry Wills

"What experience and history teach is... that people and government have never learned anything from history." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"The art of government is the organization of idolatry." - George Bernard Shaw

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw

"Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason." - George Santayana

"Government neither subsists nor arises because it is good or useful, but solely because it is inevitable." - George Santayana

"Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best." - George Washington

"Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government." - George Washington

"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government." - George Washington

"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality." - George Washington

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." - George Washington