Henry Giroux Quotes

For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart the notion that the government is all of us and that, therefore, the government may keep things in trust for all of us.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Government is instituted for the common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.

No government has a legitimate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed.

If it be true that democracy is based upon the assumption that every man shall serve his fellow man, the organization of democracy should be gradually adapted to that assumption.

Government is instituted for those who live under it.

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.

The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly.

Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights.

Formerly government was the responsibility of people; now people were the responsibility of government.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

We believe that government works for the benefit of private life, and not the other way around.

Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

As individual life has more and more given place to crowded community life, the rights and privileges once deemed essential to the perfect liberty of the individual are often found to stand in the way of the public welfare, and to breed wrong and injustice to the community at large.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

The right to private property is inconceivable without responsibilities to the common good.

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

Government is a progressive instrument for the common good.

All government is intended for the benefit of the people.

The legitimate object of government is "to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.

We need government to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves.