William Godwin Quotes

There is no force greater than the state force.

Government is not capable of caring. Government gets things done through coercion. They fine, they penalize, they tax, they confiscate, they jail, they bully to get what they want.

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

All governments, without exception, are stable only insofar as they can effectively reward and punish.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

Even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.

The state is force incarnate, its essence is command and compulsion.

Government is force.

In a sense, the police power is but another name for the power of government.

A government role in our society should be inherently suspect …. There is something inherently coercive in the nature of government.

Governmental power is the faculty to beat into submission all those who would dare to disobey the orders issued by the authorities. … Every governmental action is backed by constables, prison guards, and executioners. However beneficial a governmental action may appear, it is ultimately made possible only by the government's power to compel its subjects to do what many of them would not do if they were not threatened by the police and the penal courts.

There never was a government without force.... A governement leaving it to a man to do his duty, or not, as he pleases, would be a new species of government, or rather no government at all.

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.

Every government, every country, has the right to exercise force when necessary.

The heart of government, coated with whatever velvet gloves you want to put on it, is a mailed fist of force and coercion.

The one thing government has which we (you or I or any corporation) DON'T have, is the ability to use deadly force to accomplish its goals.

The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

Government has a legitimate sphere of operation. The problem arises when that sphere continually expands, encompassing areas where government lacks legitimacy.

War is just one more big government program.

The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.

Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies.