Politics / Government Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

747 Politics / Government Quotes
“Men resort to talking only when they haven't the power to enforce their convictions upon others.”
Lin Yutang Quotes
“It is precisely those things which belong to "the people" which have historically been despoiled- wild creatures, the air, and waterways being notable examples. This goes to the heart of why property rights are socially important in the first place. Property rights mean self-interested monitors. No owned creatures are in danger of extinction. No owned forests are in danger of being leveled. No one kills the goose that lays the golden egg when it is his goose.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“...the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religious faith or political conviction.”
Arthur Koestler Quotes
“It can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.”
Albert Jay Nock Quotes
“To say that a farm boy knows how to milk a cow is to say that we can send him out to the barn with an empty pail and expect him to return with milk. To say that a criminologist understands crime is not to say that we can send him out with a grant or a law and expect him to return with a lower crime rate. He is more likely to return with a report on why he has not succeeded yet, and including the inevitable need for more money, a larger staff, more sweeping powers, etc.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“I think most historians will agree that the part played by impulses of selfish, individual aggression in the holocausts of history was small; first and foremost, the slaughter was meant as an offering to the gods, to king and country, or the future happiness of mankind. The crimes of Caligula shrink to insignificance compared to the havoc wrought by Torquemada. The number of victims of robbers, highwaymen, rapists, gangsters and other criminals at any period of history is negligible compared to the massive numbers of those cheerfully slain in the name of the true religion, just policy, or correct ideology.”
Arthur Koestler Quotes
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“Nobody can be trusted with unlimited power. The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom.”
Rudolph Rummel Quotes
“Power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.”
Rudolph Rummel Quotes
“The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom.”
Rudolph Rummel Quotes
“For the sake of domestic peace, liberalism aims at democratic government. Democracy is therefore not a revolutionary institution. On the contrary it is the very means of preventing revolution and civil wars. It provides a method for the peaceful adjustment of government to the will of the majority.”
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
“The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.”
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
“If the small minority of enlightened citizens who are able to conceive sound principles of political management do not succeed in winning the support of their fellow citizens and converting them to the endorsement of policies that bring and preserve prosperity, the cause of mankind and civilization is hopeless. There is no other means to safeguard a propitious development of human affairs than to make the masses of inferior people adopt the ideas of the elite. This has to be achieved by convincing them. It cannot be accomplished by a despotic regime that instead of enlightening the masses beats them into submission. In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.”
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
“I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.”
Karl Popper Quotes
“To include freedom in the very definition of democracy is to define a process not by its actual characteristics as a process but by its hoped for results. This is not only intellectually invalid, it is, in practical terms, blinding oneself in advance to some of the unwanted consequences of the process.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“To complain of lack of leadership is, in the field of political affairs, the characteristic attitude of all harbingers of dictatorship.”
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
“I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.”
P.J. O'Rourke Quotes
“The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”
P.J. O'Rourke Quotes
“Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“The celebration of unbounded individualism means, beyond some point, the acceptance of force- either private (crime, riot, vigilanteism) or public (authoritarianism).”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“Freedom...refer[s] to a social relationship among people- namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.”
Thomas Sowell Quotes
“Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware.”
Arthur Koestler Quotes
“...regrettable as it may seem to the idealist, the experience of history provides little warrant for the belief that real progress, and the freedom that makes progress possible, lies in unification. For where unification has been able to establish unity of ideas it has usually ended in uniformity, paralysing the growth of new ideas. And where the unification has merely brought about an artificial or imposed unity, its irksomeness has led through discord to disruption.Vitality springs from diversity- which makes for real progress so long as there is mutual toleration, based on the recognition that worse may come from an attempt to suppress differences than from acceptance of them. For this reason, the kind of peace that makes progress possible is best assured by the mutual checks created by a balance of forces- alike in the sphere of internal politics and of international relations.”
B.h. Liddell Hart Quotes
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