780 quotes found
“In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if l...”
“The duty of the people is to tend to their own affairs.The duty of government is to help them do it.This is the pasta of politics.The inspired leader, the true prince, no matter how great, can only...”
“So, ignorant we are. But we're not stupid. Indeed...remaining ignorant about politics and our government is a perfectly rational response to the government we have. The question isn't what we know....”
“But having biologists outside the Beltway remained a problem for the adminisration. "They found they couldn't control us," Williams said... "That sort of thing just drove them up the wall. They wer...”
“How is the schoolmaster, the nation, to know which boy needs the whipping?”
“If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.”
“I need to say this you shouldn't trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and informat...”
“[Obamacare] was almost the perfect example of politics in the Bubble Era, where the time horizon for anyone with real power is always close to zero, long-term thinking is an alien concept, and even...”
“Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political systemThe central feature of the Ameri...”
“When theres a vacuum of public input, lobbyists usually fill it. But when theres public input, the people usually win.”
“It is a false and dangerous situation which bases public power on private want, and roots the grandeur of the State in the suffering of the individual. It is a badly constituted grandeur which comb...”
“What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'?”
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first subsidize.”
“We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid of cumbersome machinery.”
“Surely of all rights of man, this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest.”
“A man can lead a reasonably full life without a family, a fixed local residence, or a religious affiliation, but if he is stateless he is nothing. He has no rights, no security, and little opportun...”
“A tyrant has uncommon moral compass.”
“Uncertainty is one of government recipes.”
“The order should not have been given,' she said. 'It was not done for the city but for your private ends.'I shook my head. 'There is no difference.'You believe that?'A Prince must, or he is no Prince.”
“Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing even...”
