This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It is not in the power of man to devise any form of government free from imperfections and dangers." - Hugo Grotius, also known as Huig de Groot, Hugo Grocio or Hugo de Groot
"The bravest and best men of all times have perished in the struggles against tyranny and despotism, and free government has never secured even a feeble existence save at a most fearful cost. The experiment of republican government in our own country is similar to that of all others. Here, however, liberty has won her grandest triumphs. Here freedom is enthroned securely and is the unchallenged boon of every inhabitant. But we contemplate the cost of victory with mournful and pitying hearts." - Harrison Eugene Havens
"All good government must begin at home. It is useless to make good laws for bad people; what is wanted is this, to subdue the tyranny of the human heart." - Hugh Reginald Haweis
"It’s universally wrong to steal from your neighbor, but once you get the one-to-one level, and pit the individual against the multinational conglomerate, the federal bureaucracy, the modern plantation of agro-business, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgment to decide exactly who is stealing from whom. One person’s crime is another person’s profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals and how much." - Abbie Hoffman, fully Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman
"You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people’s souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die." - Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
"Both these perspectives - that the government is responsible for us, and that we are responsible only for ourselves - are dehumanizing. To be fully human, we can neither give up responsibility for ourselves nor refuse responsibility for others. Indeed, we need to redefine individual responsibility to include social responsibility." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny." - Anna Jameson
"If every nation gets the government it deserves every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world." - Elizabeth Janeway, born Elizabeth Ames Hall
"A little rebellion now and then... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." - Thomas Jefferson
"Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad... freedom of religion, freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trials by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation." - Thomas Jefferson
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rules of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories." - Thomas Jefferson
"Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labors and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered." - Thomas Jefferson
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in the punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." - Thomas Jefferson
"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." - Thomas Jefferson
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government." - Thomas Jefferson
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
"A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children." - Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
"No government is better than the men who compose it." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"Self-government requires qualities of self-denial and restraint." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"The basis of effective government is public confidence." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"One of the things we have to be thankful for is that we don't get as much government as we pay for." - Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering
"A government is not legitimate merely because it exists." - Jeane Kirkpatrick
"You can't run a government solely on a business basis." - Herbert H. Lehman
"If ever this free people, if this government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office - that is, a way to live without work." - Abraham Lincoln
"The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere." - Abraham Lincoln
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." - Abraham Lincoln
"When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is despotism... No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." - Abraham Lincoln
"It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most." - Walter Lippmann
"The great and chief end... of men uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property." - John Locke
"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind-that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Not in theory, but in truth, the best and most excellent government for each nation is the one under which it has preserved its existence. Its form and essential fitness depend on habit. We are prone to be discontented with the present state of things. But I maintain, nevertheless, that to wish for the government of a few in a democratic state, or another type of government in a monarchy, is foolish and wrong." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"A government is like everything else: to preserve it we must love it." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government: with regard to virtue, there is no occasion for it, and honor would be extremely dangerous." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"The corruption of every government begins nearly always with that of principles." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"Government is the only institution that can take a valuable commodity like paper, and make it worthless by applying ink." - Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
"The best government is that which governs least." - John L. O'Sullivan
"A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal but a real existence, and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of a people constituting a government. It is the body of elements to which you refer, and quote article by article, and contains the principles on which the government shall be established - the form in which it shall be organized - the powers it shall have - the mode of elections - the duration of Congress - and, in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution is to a government, therefore, what the laws made by that government care to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made; and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution." - Thomas Paine
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. " - Thomas Paine
"It is clear that property in itself owes allegiance to no particular form of government, and is bound by no dynastic or legal ties. Its politics may be summed up in a single word: exploitation, or even anarchy. It is the most formidable enemy and most treacherous ally of any form of power. In short, in its relation to the State it is governed by only one principle, one sentiment, one concern: self-interest, or egoism... That is why all governments, all utopias, and all Churches distrust property... We can conclude that property is the greatest existing revolutionary force, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies: under a bad government no one cares to stir a step to get to them, because no one is interested in what happens there, because it is foreseen that the general will not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are all-absorbing. Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it alone... What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The advance planning and sense stimuli employed to capture a $10 million cigarette or soap market are nothing compared to the brain-washing and propaganda blitzes used to ensure control of the largest cash market in the world - the Executive Branch of the United States Government." - Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly
"Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or the instrument of government - but the reverse... If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom, no religious freedom, no freedom of families to make their own decisions [regarding having children]. All these freedoms tend to reinforce on another." - Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.
"The form of government is unimportant - the spirit everything." - Karl von Schmidt
"I believe democracy to be of all forms of government the most natural and the most consonant with individual liberty. In it no one transfers his natural right so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs, he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a unit. Thus all men remain, as they were in the state of nature, equals." -
"The ultimate aim of Government is not to rule or restrain by fear, not to exact obedience, but on the contrary, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself and others. The object of government is not to hang men from rational beings into puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled... The true aim of Government is liberty." -