John Pilger Quotes

The government is so out of control. It is so bloated and infested with fraud and deceit and corruption and abuse of power.

The pathological degree to which former Vice President Dick Cheney operated in secrecy led to government abuses that we'll probably spend years learning about.

The chief bandit is the head of the state himself.

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

There are no necessary evils in government. It's evils exist only in its abuses.

If the national government falls into the hands of sufficiently unprincipled men, they can do terrible things before any one can stop them.

Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power.

What happens when you get any kind of entrenched power is that it just becomes kind of corrupt and self-serving.

When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it.

The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate.

I suppose this [Watergate] is an example of the dangers of letting down your guard against increased executive powers–no matter what the circumstances. Not that the danger was not real, but in this case the risk of the remedy was as great as the disease. There was a willingness to accept without challenge the Executive's claim to increased power. That's why we acted as we did, and it was a mistake.

Today we have in this country the abuses of a military dictation without its unity of action and vigor of execution.

We have before us in the White House … a criminal—known to be armed and dangerous.

This administration seems intent on accumulating unchecked power.

The greatest of all evils is a weak government.

We have seen the evil of perpetuation of centralization of government, and of control from Great bureaucracies, appointments of courts and control of our foreign relations, all due to the bill-up, accumulated potency and power of one man [FDR] remaining to long in public office.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations perverted it into tyranny.

We have the President assuming powers that are never going to end.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Senator Howard Baker selected me to be the Republicans’ lawyer in the Watergate hearings, and the Republicans really needed lawyers then.

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

Absolute power should never be trusted to man. It has perverted the wisest heads, and corrupted the best hearts in the world. I should be afraid to commit my property, liberty and life to a body of angels for one whole year.

A transition from party to personal government has preceded every failure of a republic.