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Would it not be simpler / If the Government / Dissolved the people / And elected another? – Bertolt Brecht
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History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided. – Konrad Adenauer
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The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community. – John Stuart Mill
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Today the nations of the world may be divided into two classes – the nations in which the government fears the people, and the nations in which the people fear the government. – Amos R. E. Pinochet
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. – Bertrand Russell
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Pro is to con as progress is to Congress. – Anonymous
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Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too. – Richard M. Nixon
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there. – Clare Booth Luce
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It can produce cynicism if people believe that the process is merely something that has to happen; they almost become bit players in the process, arriving at decisions that are already made. I emphasise the importance of people knowing that their participation is for real, and that it can affect the outcome. We should not allow public sector managers simply to tick a box to say that they have done the participation bit; participation should contribute to the decision-making process. If it does not, we will genuinely undercut all the good things that are happening. – Tony Wright, British MP
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In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences. – Robert Green Ingersoll
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It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done. – Oscar Wilde
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The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. – Louis Brandeis
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Bureaucracies have a natural tendency not to cooperate, coordinate or consolidate with each other. They won’t cooperate with each other – unless they are forced to do so by political level authority. – Richard Holbrooke
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Regulations are government embedding and marbling its way into and out of successive layers of societal activity. It is government deconstructing, rebuilding, renovating and expanding a little each day. The regulatory machinery may move a little faster or a little slower, but like rust, it never sleeps. – Scott Proudfoot
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In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. – Thich Nhat Hanh
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I wouldn’t say voters are stupid. But the same voter who wants unlimited services also does not want to pay for it. There’s a disconnect. – Phil Talmadge
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I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the rights of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. – James Madison
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A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! – Abraham Lincoln
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Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul. – Margaret Thatcher
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You never reach the promised land. You can march towards it. – James Callaghan
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The function of government is to calm, rather than to excite agitation. – Viscount Palmerston
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I repeat, that all power is a trust, that we are accountable for its exercise, and that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist. – Benjamin Disraeli
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It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire
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It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack. – Voltaire
