This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"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." -
"Religion in American takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions... How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?" - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." - Edward R. Murrow, born Egbert Roscoe Murrow
"Since man created government to help secure and safeguard [inalienable] rights [from God], it follows that man is superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around." - Ezra Taft Benson
"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.
"Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders." - Frank Herbert, formally Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.
"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States." - George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
"If they have real grievances redress them, if possible; or acknowledge the justice of them, and your inability to do it at the moment. If they have not, employ the force of government against them at once." - George Washington
"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." - George Washington
"All government is an ugly necessity." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
"A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves." - Grover Cleveland, fully Stephen Grover Cleveland
"When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some." - Harry Blackmun, fully Harold "Harry" Andrew Blackmun
"You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad - in fact, to do anything it wants. " - Harry Browne, fully Harry Edson Browne
"Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people." - Henry Clay
"The great advantage of our system of government over all others, is, that we have a written constitution, defining its limits, and prescribing its authorities; and that, however, for a time, faction may convulse the nation, and passion and party prejudice sway its functionaries, the season of reflection will recur, when calmly retracing their deeds, all aberrations from fundamental principle will be corrected." - Henry Clay
"All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty." - Henry Clay
"To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be." - Henry George
"The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men " - Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
"That government is best which governs least. " - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"The ideal government… is one which lets the individual alone one which barely escapes being no government at all. " - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business. " - Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
"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. " - Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
" Our government is an agency of delegated and strictly limited powers. Its founders did not look to its preservation by force; but the chain they wove to bind these States together was one of love and mutual good offices." - Jefferson Davis, known as Jeff Davis
"The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power. " - James Bovard
"With attention deficit democracy, I am trying to wake up people to how the combination of mass ignorance, fear mongering by the government, and lying politicians is putting our entire system of government to a death spiral." - James Bovard
"America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. By trying to seize far more power than is necessary over American citizens, the federal government is destroying its own legitimacy. We face a choice not of anarchy or authoritarianism, but a choice of limited government or unlimited government." - James Bovard
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. " - James Madison
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions. " - James Madison
"Religion and government both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." - James Madison
"A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." - James Madison
"Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not." - James Madison
"But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" - James Madison
"A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top. " - James Barrett Reston, nicknamed "Scotty"
"The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society." - James Fenimore Cooper
"We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent." - James Paul Warburg
"Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers" - James Q. Wilson
"Tranquility is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right. Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of judgment, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimize an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary. " -
"Tranquility is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right. Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of judgment, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimize an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary. " - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion. " - 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." - Jeremy Bentham
"Conservatism is a hard choice for a society that has become accustomed to big government and big entitlements promoted by liberals. " - Jesse Helms, fully Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr.
"The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government." - Jim Hightower, fully James Allen "Jim" Hightower
"The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves. " - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"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. " - James Allen
"Indeed, in a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen." - John Marshall
"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about." - John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
"This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people and for the people." - John Wyclif
"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. " - John Caldwell Calhoun