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Politics Quotes

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Politics Quotes

“It is a law of nature that everything run by the government will get more expensive and worse over time. Everything run by the private sector will get better and cheaper over time. The fact that [Obamacare] starts this badly does not bode well....We want healthcare run on the same system that gave us cell phones, flat screens, Jerry Garcia chia pets. Everything you submit to the free market...keeps getting better and better.”

WantWellsDoeFactsRealityGovernmentRunningLawPoliticalPoliticsMoneyPartyHistoryTechnologyDemocracyHuman NatureHealthCapitalismPhonesScreensIdeologyCellsGet BetterExpensivePetFlatsHealthcareSubmitConsumerismPolitical PartiesFree MarketLaws Of NatureCell PhoneObamacareCheaperPrivate SectorJerry
Author:Ann Coulter
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“Tactics and strategies ought to be based on what the real world is, and we do not have the political power to do this. We're not about to shut the government down over the fact that we cannot, only controlling one house of Congress, tell the president that we're not going to fund any portion of [Obamacare]. Because we can't do that.”

WorldRealFactsRealityGovernmentPoliticalHousePoliticsPresidentCommunityLeadershipMoneyPartyPolicyHealthOughtConstitutionStrategyCongressIdeologyFundReal WorldPortionsPolitical PartiesTacticsCivilityObamacarePolitical PowerPartisanshipTactics And Strategy
Author:Tom Coburn
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“We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.”

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Book:The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations
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“Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government--a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave. To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed.”

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Author:Cato the Younger
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“In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss.”

ShouldGovernmentWould BePoliticalPoliticsLossOfficeLaborBurdenIntenseDeclineVirtuousPublic OfficeForeseenTimes Like These
Book:Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness
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“To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition.”

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Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont
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“The 16th Amendment corroded the American concept of natural rights; ultimately reduced the American citizen to a status of subject, so much so that he is not aware of it; enhanced Executive power to the point of reducing Congress to innocuity; and enabled the central government to bribe the states, once independent units, into subservience. No kingship in the history of the world ever exercised more power than our Presidency, or had more of the people's wealth at its disposal.”

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Book:Income Tax: Root of All Evil
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“The house of representatives ... can make no law, which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.”

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Author:James Madison
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“They took care to represent government as a thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves understood, and they hid from the understanding of the nation, the only thing that was beneficial to know, namely, that government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.”

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Book:Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
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“The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.”

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Book:The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies
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“What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.”

MeanGovernmentFormPoliticalPoliticsParticularRepublicArbitraryMonarchyForms Of Government
Book:THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…
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“Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.”

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Book:Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
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“Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.”

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Book:Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
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“It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected, possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.”

IfsPersonsGovernmentPoliticalPoliticsCasesElectionCandidatesRepresentationUnlimitedParliamentDespotismUnlimited Power
Book:The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the American Revolution : to which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life
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“Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.”

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Book:Selected Writings of Thomas Paine
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“What does it mean when Republicans and Democrats alike warn us about the 'pain' involved in cutting government spending - in their spending less of our money? For the average citizen, what pain is there in his keeping more of his money to invest it the way he wants? Taxes cost people. Tax cuts do not cost government.”

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Author:Theodore J. Forstmann
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“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.”

IfsThinkingGovernmentPoliticalCertainPoliticsWiseSubjectsMastersLibertarianThrivePopularityHelplessHelplessnessDespotsPower GovernmentPower Politics
Book:The Dosadi Experiment and The Eyes of Heisenberg: Two Classic Works of Science Fiction
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“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”

PeopleRealWholeGovernmentPoliticalPurposePoliticsSocialProcessStepsGrowingCrisisSeparationReformPatrioticGapsTemporaryEmergenciesAllegianceSlow Motion
Author:Milton Mayer
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“During World War II, Joseph Stalin was once asked by an American writer, according to Professor Dean Russell, how he could justify conscripting all the property of all the people for use by the government to fight the war. Stalin answered by asking why they considered it more immoral and illogical to conscript lifeless property than to conscript life itself, as was being done in the United States and all other capitalistic countries. His American challenger had no answer, because there was no answer.”

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Author:Ron Paul
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“The government should cultivate the view also among the propertyless classes of the population, those who are the most numerous and the least educated, that the state is not only an institution of necessity but also of welfare. By recognizable and direct advantages they must be led to look upon the state not as an agency devised solely for the protection of the better-situated classes of society but also as one serving their needs and interests.”

NeedsShouldLooksStatesGovernmentPoliticalPoliticsInterestViewsClassAdvantageDirectInstitutionsPopulationProtectionEducatedWelfareAgencyLook UpServingClasses Of Society
Author:Otto von Bismarck
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“There is a connection waiting to be made between the decline in democratic participation and the explosion in new ways of communicating. We need not accept the paradox that gives us more ways than ever to speak, and leaves the public with a wider feeling than ever before that their voices are not being heard. The new technologies can strengthen our democracy, by giving us greater opportunities than ever before for better transparency and a more responsive relationship between government and electors”

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Author:Robin Cook
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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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Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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“If wealth is accumulated in the hands of a few, either by a feudal or a stock monopoly, it carries the power also; and a government becomes as certainly aristocratical, by a monopoly of wealth, as by a monopoly of arms. A minority, obtaining a majority of wealth or arms in any mode, becomes the government.”

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Book:An Inquiry Into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States
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“It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the protection of the government.”

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Book:Speeches and Forensic Arguments
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“The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in a few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless.”

IfsLongHandsGovernmentLawPoliticsEconomyMassPropertyPopulationTendenciesLiberalismDependentAcceptableRapidsAccumulation
Book:The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster
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“The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend... The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.”

GovernmentPoliticsTeachingCitizensComfortProtectionPrincipalCheatBullyNuisanceGood CitizenObstruction
Book:Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1872 [1876] Ed
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