5,272 Quotes About Government

The very term ‘public utility’ … is an absurd one. Every good is useful ‘to the public,’ and almost every good … may be considered ‘necessary.’ Any designation of a few industries as ‘public utilities’ is completely arbitrary and unjustified.

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.

the illusion that power lies within the hands of the common man is more important than legitimate efficiency within the government.

Discerning the difference between a dictator and a leader is quite easy. The former cannot help but see ‘leading’ and ‘serving’ as stark contradictions that by their very nature are utterly incompatible. The latter can’t tell the difference

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this--that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.

Profit should never come at the cost of human blood. Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force