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August 3, 2006
Political Power
ome quotes that your school teachers may have forgotten to pass along:
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
— Attributed to George Washington
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
— Edmund Burke, 1729-1797, Irish Statesman
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action acccording to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
— Thomas Jefferson
"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million human beings collected together are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately."
— Thomas Jefferson
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
— Thomas Jefferson
"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."
— Adam Smith, 1723-1790, Economist
"Political power is the game of playing God. It changes a person and makes him different from the rest of us. He begins to believe he has some kind of right to interfere in the lives of others. He may even believe he has the right to choose who lives and who dies."
— Richard Maybury, THE THOUSAND YEAR WAR IN THE MIDEAST, 1999.
"The history of liberty is a history of limitation of government power, not the increase of it."
— Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924
28th President of the United States
"Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves."
— Benjamin Constant, 1833-1891, Brazilian statesman
"In questions of power...let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
— Thomas Jefferson, 1803
"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, The Dosadi Experiment, 1978.
"On my arrival in the United States I was struck by the degree of ability among the governed and the lack of it among the governing."
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835-40
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys."
— P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores, 1991.
Posted by witnit at August 3, 2006 1:51 PM
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