Great Throughts Treasury

"The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government." - George Washington

"I believe that truth is the glue that holds Governments together, not only our Government, but civilization itself." -

"If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have." -

"Government, today, has grown too strong to be safe." -

"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t mix." - Harry S. Truman

"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship." - Harry S. Truman

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." - Harry S. Truman

"The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men" -

"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"The government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rules or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"Why is [government] not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out faults… Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?" - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way: government, society, and even the sun, moon and stars." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent." - Henry Steele Commager

"Allow the state to invade the areas of thought, of education, of the press, of religion, of association, and we will have statism... For if once we get a government strong enough to control men’s minds, we will have a government strong enough to control everything." - Henry Steele Commager

"The worst thing in the world, next to anarchy, is government." - Henry Ward Beecher

"Only a few rare souls in a century, to whose class I make no pretension, count much in the great flow of this Republic. The life stream of this nation is the generations of millions of human particles acting under the impulses of advancing ideas and national ideals gathered from a thousand springs... We are but transitory officials in government whose duty is to keep these channels clear and to strengthen and extend these dikes. What counts toward the honor of public officials is that they sustain the national ideals upon which are patterned the design of these channels of progress and the construction of these dikes of safety." -

"It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business." -

"Democracy is not just a counting up of votes – it is a counting up of actions. Without those on the bottom acting out there desires for justice – as the government acts out its needs, and those with power and privilege act out theirs – the scales of democracy will be off. That is why civil disobedience is not just to be tolerated – if we are to have a truly democratic society it is a necessity." - Howard Zinn

"If Thomas Jefferson were in Washington yesterday walking down the street, he would have been arrested. He was too young, and he had long hair! And if Jefferson had been carrying the Declaration of Independence with him yesterday, he would have been indicted for conspiring to overthrow the government, along with his co-conspirators George Washington and John Adams and Tom Paine and a lot of others." - Howard Zinn

"Virtue... in so far as it is based on internal freedom, contains a positive command for man, namely, that he should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule (that of reason); and this is a positive precept of command over himself which is additional to the prohibition, namely, that he should not allow himself to be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of government into its own hands, the feelings and inclinations play the master over the man." - Immanuel Kant

"Law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe; justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life; and righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world." -

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species; where arbitrary tax invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied by an unfeeling policy as another spur; in violation of that sacred property which heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities." - James Madison

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, though from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort, as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." - James Madison

"Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right, and wrong; on the other, the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne." - Jeremy Bentham

"I recognize, as the all-comprehensive, and only right and proper end of Government, the greatest happiness of the members of the community in question: the greatest happiness - of all of them, without exception , in so far as possible.: the greatest happiness of the greatest number of them..." - Jeremy Bentham

"Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, Pain and Pleasure - they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it." - Jeremy Bentham

"The business of government is to promote the happiness of the society, by punishing and rewarding." - Jeremy Bentham

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams

"As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it, in reason, morality, and the natural fitness of things." - John Adams

"I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs." - John Davison Rockefeller, Jr.

"My experience in government is that when things are non-controversial, beautifully coordinated, and all the rest, it must be that not much is going on." -

"A people in a state of savage independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by fits, from any external control, is practically incapable of making any progress in civilization until it has learnt to obey. The indispensable virtue, therefore, in a government which establishes itself over a people of this sort is, that it make itself obeyed." - John Stuart Mill

"Among the foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in after which directly affect the great interests of their country." - John Stuart Mill

"One of the greatest dangers... of democracy, as of all other forms of government, lies in the sinister interest of the holders of power: it is the danger of class legislation; of government intended for (whether really effecting it or not) the immediate benefit of the dominant class, to the lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the most important questions demanding consideration, in determining the best constitution of a representative government, is how to provide efficacious securities against this evil." - John Stuart Mill

"The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power." - John Stuart Mill

"The proper functions of a government are not a fixed thing, but different in different states of society; much more extensive in a backward than in an advanced state." - John Stuart Mill

"In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves." - John Stuart Mill

"I have not much faith in "good government." What we need is the development of the individual." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retribution." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"They [the makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone...the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it." -

"The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology - is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing - you, your family, your neighborhood, your education, your job, your government, your relation to “the others.” And they’re changing dramatically." -

"A world technology means either a world government or world suicide." - Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner

"Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is necessary to preserve our freedom. It is an instrument through which we can exercise our political freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom." -

"The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy." -

"The role of government [in a free society]… is to do something that the market cannot do for itself, namely, to determine, arbitrate, and enforce the rules of the game." -

"I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion… The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other." -

"Public instruction should be the first object of government." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I