Famous Quotes & Sayings

Meiklejohn's position is that free speech in a democracy is not an absolute flowing from the boundless source of some presumed 'natural right.' It is a practical necessity of 'self-government by universal suffrage,' for if the citizens are not permitted to argue out the issues of government, how can they be what they must be in a democracy - the rulers as well as the ruled?

Matthew Lesko

One of the worst things to come out of the Consumer Protection Board's misleading claims is the impression that government resources are to hard to get and just aren't available for regular people like you and I.

Maynard James Keenan

But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people.

Maynard James Keenan

Just in general, any government throughout history hasn't really wanted its people to be educated, because then they couldn't control them as easily.

Matt Salmon

When you give the government an inch, they take a mile.

Matt Walsh

It used to be that your rights were infringed upon if the government punished or threatened you for expressing your sincerest beliefs. Now, your rights are infringed upon if you want something but someone refuses to buy it for you.

Matt Taibbi

The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term.

Matt Taibbi

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

Meg Greenfield

If you were starting from scratch to invent an instrument that could impose fiscal discipline, the last one on earth you would come up with is the United States government.

Meg Greenfield

In government and out, there are vast realms of the bureaucracy dedicated to seeking more information, in perpetuity if need be, in order to avoid taking action.

Meg Whitman

Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it

May-Britt Moser

As part of the National Strategy, the Government should commit itself to the virtual elimination of functional illiteracy and innumeracy.

Maximilien Robespierre

lf the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.

Maximilien Robespierre

The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.

Max Weber

The great virtue of bureaucracy - indeed, perhaps its defining characteristic ~ was that it was an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable.

Max Weber

A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

Matthew Continetti

In the liberal imagination, the money is the government's by default, and the president and Congress determine through the tax code how much to give back to the people.

Pat Paulsen

All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.

P. J. O'Rourke

No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works.

P. J. O'Rourke

Government conspiracy? They can't even deliver our mail and it's got our address on it and everything!

Plato

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.

Plautus

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plato

A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!

Plato

So where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

Plato

Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

Plato

Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.

Martin Schulz

If cooperation among governments were the superior concept for progress in Europe, I'd be onboard immediately. But the problem is that cooperation isn't working.

Martin Schulz

Just come to Brussels after a Council meeting. Do you know what happens? Every head of government holds his or her own press conference. They all say the same thing, in 24 languages: I was able to push through my agenda. And if the result is anything other than what they desired, the message is: Brussels is to blame. It has been this way for over 20 years. These messages stick with people, and that's deadly for Europe.

Martin Schulz

The stubborn stance of some European governments on the refugee question is a reprisal less aimed at Angela Merkel or (Vice Chancellor) Sigmar Gabriel than at certain people on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin.

Martin Schulz

We have committed ourselves to pursue joint policies, but then national governments say, "We aren't bound by that." That is a dramatic situation, because solidarity is a basic principle that cannot be had on an à la carte basis. If we have rules that nobody adheres to, then the community will break apart.

Martin Sheen

I honestly do not know if civil disobedience has any effect on the government. I can promise you it has a great effect on the person who chooses to do it.

Lech Walesa

We need a global parliament, a global government and possibly a global ministry for security.

Lee Child

I'm opposed to censorship of any kind, especially by government. But it's plain common sense that producers should target their product with some kind of sensitivity.