Glenn Greenwald Quotes

He who is the most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power is as eager after for the prerogatives of government.

As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people.

Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.

Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.

Most governments are designed for the purposes of oppression and personal ambition.

Government is no sooner created than it becomes too strong for society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls it.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

The good government of one man is the bad government of another

Everything is selected by the central government without good judgment or an understanding of culture to make it really safe. They will become nobody to maintain their power and be raised to the next higher level.

The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.

Government is the assumption of authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries.

Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into Tyranny. The danger of such deterioration is more acute in a country in which the government has authority not only over the armed forces but also over every channel of education and information.

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.

The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.

Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

When power is for sale, then government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better.

The capitalist class rules but does not govern: it contents itself with ruling the government.

You see, that's the whole point of being in government. If you don't like something you simply make up a law that makes it illegal.

The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government.

Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped.

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.

If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.

The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.

To be governed is, under pretext of public utility and in the name of the general interest, to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed and robbed; then, upon the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, annoyed, hunted down, pulled about, beaten, disarmed, bound, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

Government is an apparatus of compulsion and coercion.