Quotes on Government

Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

The evolution of government from its medieval, Mafia-like character to that embodying modern legal institutions and instruments is a major part of the history of freedom. It is a part that tends to be obscured or ignored because of the myopic vision of many economists, who persist in modeling government as nothing more than a gigantic form of theft and income redistribution.

It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.

Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'

It appears first, that liberty is a natural, and government an adventitious right, because all men were originally free.

The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough - too much perhaps in some respects - but at all events, liberty to our hearts content.

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.

There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government.

Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials.

Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad.

If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never intrust that instruction to any government; for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.

Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

And as a matter of fact, governments don't act, governments only react. The bankers make the decisions, and then governments decide how are we going to adjust to this. Government can't do anything unless the bank gives them the money to do it.

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.

If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.

Never in the history of the world has there been a situation so bad that the government can't make it worse.

As they say, one thing led to another, and, ultimately, the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations, which ironically began six years ago this week.

If the Government gets into business on any large scale, we soon find that the beneficiaries attempt to play a large part in the control. While in theory it is to serve the public, in practice it will be very largely serving private interests. It comes to be regarded as a species of government favor and those who are the most adroit get the larger part of it.

The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.