Politics / Government Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

747 Politics / Government Quotes
“The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition, and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that "one man is as good as another;" a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“Property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the central institution of a free society.”
David Friedman Quotes
“The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.”
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
“There's only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
P.J. O'Rourke Quotes
“...it may fairly be doubted if any political tyranny ever imposed on its people such a fear, such a longing for freedom, such a paralysis of the spirit, as disease. I doubt if the average Englishman felt himself as much oppressed by Charles I as by the plague; or if any colonial American was as much in dread of taxation without representation as of smallpox. And it may reasonably be contended that Walter Reed and William Crawford Gorgas brought to man freedom in a more happy sense and in a larger measure than any military or political leader.”
Mark Sullivan Quotes
“All that a good government aims at...is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.”
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
“A little government and a little luck are necessary in life; but only a fool trusts either of them.”
P.J. O'Rourke Quotes
“The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.”
P.J. O'Rourke Quotes
“Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.”
Rudolph Rummel Quotes
“...no civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“...Although the political liberty of this country is greater than that of nearly every other civilized nation, its personal liberty is said to be less. In other words, men are thought to be more under the control of extra-legal authorities, and to defer more to those around them, in pursuing even their lawful and innocent occupations, than in almost every other country.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“It is seldom that any liberty is lost all at once.”
David Hume Quotes
“We have a solution for war. It is to expand the sphere of liberty.”
Rudolph Rummel Quotes
“In America, it is indispensable that every well wisher of true liberty should understand that acts of tyranny can only proceed from the publick. The publick, then, is to be watched, in this country, as, in other countries kings and aristocrats are to be watched.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.”
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
“If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property; if we have property, we must have its rights; if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.”
James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
“The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.”
Dr. Strangelove Quotes
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. - "Amendment II".”
U. S. Constitution Quotes
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