Jonathan Shapiro Quotes

Forget about war or disease or poverty. The apocalypse is when America's elected president is no longer supervised by the unelected ruling establishment.

Americans are naturally suspicious of too much government and they see divided government as a safeguard.

Americans invented not simply a new form of government but an entirely new concept of politics.

It cannot be denied with truth, that this new constitution is, in its first principles, most highly and dangerously, oligarchic.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad - in fact, to do anything it wants.

How can this full, perfect, just and supreme voice of the people, embodied in the Constitution, be brought to bear, habitually and steadily, in counteracting the fatal tendency of the government to the absolute and despotic control of the numerical majority?

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

I do strongly believe myself that members of the government who sit in the House of Lords should be accountable to the elected House because otherwise there is a democratic deficit, and that is wrong.

It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.

The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people.

To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.

Government is not a bottom line enterprise. You can get yourself elected ... but you can't fire the legislature if they won't do what you want.

The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power.

Our new government is now in full Operation, but how it will move or what will be the End of it I can scarcely conjecture. I am not yet in Love with it, & I doubt if I ever shall be

A life-tenured position in a democracy is an odd thing.

In America the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.

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.

There exists in modem America the necessity for protecting all of us from arbitrary action by governments more powerful and more pervasive than any in our ancestors’ time.

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

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.

Every amendment which I am convinced will have the tendency to lesson the danger of civil liberty by the central government will receive my sincere approbation.

Government is like fire. If it is kept within bounds and under the control of the people, it contributes to the welfare of all. But if it gets out of place, it gets too big and out of control, it destroys the happiness and even the lives of the people.

Rather than living in a democracy, we are living in a benevolent oligarchy.