Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Government is essentially the negation of liberty.

You can't build politics on love. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

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

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

If the king did not, without tiring, inflict punishment on those worthy to be punished, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish on a spit

Exploitation and government are two inseparable expressions of what is called politics.

Better 100 years of tyranny than one day of anarchy.

While the state exists there is no freedom; when there is freedom, there will be no state.

Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.

Extensive and organized power over large populations does not suffice to make a nation

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

War and unrest appeal to me more than good bourgeois order. Brutality is respected, the people need wholesome fear. They want to fear someone. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive.

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

We are free today because we are the stronger; we will be slaves again when the government becomes the stronger.

If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and . . . try freedom.

Freedom for the government is enslavement for the people. When the government is free the people are enslaved. When the government is contained then the people are free.

The State is the coldest of all cold monsters.

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom.

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.