"The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies."
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Government quotes
Government
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Government quotes (page 35 of 568)
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"[In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places."
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"Reasons come first. Answers come second"
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"The happiness of society is the end of government."
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"If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government."
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"The basis of effective government is public confidence, and that confidence is endangered when ethical standards falter or appear to falter."
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"Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people."
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"While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago."
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"Policies are also to blame: the only thing that the governments and people can come up with to give to the poor people is charity. Poor people get hand outs from the state. But this is not a solution to poverty."
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"The more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves."
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"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."
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"Terrorism is not an expression of rage. Terrorism is a political weapon. Remove a government's facade of infallibility, and you remove it's people's faith."
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"What we need is not more Federal government, but better local government."
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"Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation."
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"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."
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"And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government."
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"When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws."
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"Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad."
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"When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine."
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"While the Western society gives total freedom to the individuals to do whatever "consenting adults" please, which admittedly is better than having the government poke into your private life and your bedroom, like in Islamic countries, there are no moral compasses to tell what is right from wrong. The very notion of right and wrong has come under question. The motto is "if it feels good do it". Hedonism rules!"
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