If ... the machine of government ... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. ibid.
Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing. Ronald Reagan
I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. Ronald Reagan
Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives. Ronald Reagan
Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. Ronald Reagan
I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. Ronald Reagan
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties. Marquis de LaFayette
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost. Aristotle
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it. Woodrow Wilson
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. Ayn Rand
No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. Gideon John Tucker
The story of liberty is a history of the limitation of a government power, not the increase of it. William J Federer, Change to Chains
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression. H L Mencken
All government, of course, is against liberty. H L Mencken
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. H L Mencken
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. H L Mencken
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am in favour of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me for ever ineligible for public office. H L Mencken
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself ... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable. H L Mencken
We have been ruled by men who live by illusion. The illusion that you can have freedom by government decree. Margaret Thatcher
[F]reedom isn’t free. It shouldn’t be a bragging point that ‘Oh, I don't get involved in politics’, as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn’t insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable. Bill Maher, When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden
The United States’ government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pharmaceutical industry. Bill Maher: The Decider, Sky Comedy 2007
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher. Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. ibid.
Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interest, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. ibid.
Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil. ibid.
The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security. Thomas Paine
There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the ‘end of time’, or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791
Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind. ibid.
The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate. ibid.
A body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by any body. ibid.
All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny … To inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds. ibid.
When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government. ibid.
Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. ibid.
Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system. ibid.
The construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions. ibid.
When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, then may the country boast of its constitution and its government. ibid.
It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal. Thomas Paine