Ronald Reagan Quotes

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.

Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

Though the general principles of statecraft have survived the rise and fall of empires, every increase in knowledge has brought about changes in the political, economic, and social structure.

To make a State appear necessary, any would-be State must first destroy the natural order and create a Hobbesian "anarchy" characterized by looting and vandalizing.

Government is force.

Government is a necessary evil

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.

Few consider how much we are indebted to government, because few can represent how wretched mankind would be without it.

"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."

So what is government?... Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion - such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of its offices.

Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost! (96)

All government is an ugly necessity.

Government is not infallible. Government is only an executive control, a centralized authority for the purpose of expressing the will of the people; before you have a government you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government. The government must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people.

The "social contract," in the only sense in which it is not completely mythical, is a contract among conquerors, which loses its raison d'être if they are deprived of the benefits of conquest.

Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.

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.

When the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name - a constitution.

I have not hesitated to call the system of Government under which we are labouring 'satanic' and I withdraw naught out of it.

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, civil as well as political.

Personally, I think government is a tool, like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build or you can use a hammer to destroy; there is nothing intrinsically good or evil about the hammer itself. It is the purposes to which it is put and the skill with which it is used that determine whether the hammer's work is good or bad.

Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others.

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 in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.