George Washington Quotes

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

We have to recognize that the freedom of the individual has to be protected not only from the power of the state, but even more so from economic and societal power.

What I'd really like to control is not machines, but people.

Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts.

Men are more ready to offend one who desires to be beloved than one who wishes to be feared.

Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

Whilst power, superimposed, always needs the help of the police and the military, power generated from within should have little or no use of them.

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.

When authority is backed up by an immediate physical compulsion, what we are dealing with is not authority proper (i.e. symbolic authority), but simply an agency of brute force.

States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power

Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.

If we're free to do what we want, why does government always have a plan for us?

People only respond to fear.

The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses force.

The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power -even the smallest and silliest kind of power - out of the hands of ... members of a dangerous class -the class that knows what's good for us better than we do.

Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their own lives but also the lives of others

All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously.

People are submissive to power, and few of them can be influenced by doctrines of righteousness.

Anyone who is more interested in human beings than in the rules is a threat to the system.

You’ll come with us,” she said. “Sure,” Gavin said. “It wasn’t a request.” “Yes it was,” Gavin said. “When you don’t have power to compel obedience, by definition you’re making a request.

Logic has nothing to do with oppression.

Relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

They use force, to make you do, what the deciders, have decided you must do.

Whenever you have people in power, they try to control people. It's not necessarily a bad thing to control people - you can control people for good, you can control people for bad, but you're gonna try and control people.