Plato Quotes

So where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

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

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.

Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

Power over men is itself a satisfaction, besides providing opportunity to better one's circumstances with a minimum of exertion. Hence, the lust for power increases with its enjoyment and restraint is added to restraint. The government instituted to prevent men from transgressing one another's equal rights thus tends to become a transgressor of the rights of all. The injustice is far more oppressive than anyone man can do unto another, and the interests of freedom can be served only by restraint of government.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Who holds all power must fear all things.

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Human experience long ago taught us that if we allow a man or group of men autocratic powers in government or church, that they use the powers to oppress and defraud the public..

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

Government is about stealing and nothing else. That's all it's ever been about. That's all it'll ever be about.

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

The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

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

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

A strength to harm is perilous in the hand of an ambitious head.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

It is not good to have a rule of many.

The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.

Whoever is new to power is always harsh.