A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
– James Madison
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
– Aristotle
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.
– James Baldwin
As long as I don’t write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.
– Pierre Beaumarchais
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
– John Ruskin
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
– Sydney J. Harris
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
– George Washington
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
– Thomas Paine
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
– Jonathan Swift
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.
– Barry Goldwater
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
– Denis Diderot
This (Labour) government will never turn talk into action, it is time for a government that will.
– Michael Howard
Democracy is direct self government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.
– Theodore Parker
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
– Lord Acton
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
– Albert Camus
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President: I’m beginning to believe it.
– Clarence Darrow
I believe this is responsible government, not as some have called it ‘Big Brother government.’
– Tony Blair
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
– Barry Goldwater
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
– Winston Churchill
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
– Henry David Thoreau