Top 100 Quotes About Evil Government
#1. The root and source of all monetary evil is the government's monopoly on money.
Friedrich A. Hayek
#2. All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.
Leo Tolstoy
#3. In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#4. There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.
Isabel Paterson
#5. All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.
Benjamin Haydon
#6. The Tea Party elites believe government is evil. Everything about government is bad, and they blame all problems, even non-economic problems, problems that were caused by the private sector, on government.
Chuck Schumer
#7. That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.
Lyn Nofziger
#8. The invisible government [bosses] is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and are compelled to submit to it.
Walter Lippmann
#9. I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit.
James Madison
#10. The authorities? The authorities?" I laughed. "Why is it people think the authorities are some form of gods with either great justice or great, cunning evil, rather than the same plodding fools they see in their daily lives, and most of all in their mirrors?
Richard Ben Sapir
#11. We do know now, all of us, that the most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good.
Katherine Anne Porter
#12. I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.
Doris Lessing
#13. Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it - there is a certain shameful solidarity.
Victor Hugo
#14. Americans are ugly unwashed clods that live off of government cheese. If I could, I'd take every living American, grind them up into a fine paste and use that paste to feed the dolphins, because they are neglected by the evil Americans.
Thom Yorke
#15. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.
Eric Hoffer
#16. Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
Jeremy Bentham
#17. Tyranny is a form of perversion. We come to love it. Every government is a tyranny to a degree, and the more evil it is, the more it is loved. The difficulty lies in judging the degree of tyranny under which you live.
Geoff Ryman
#18. Fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.
Louis D. Brandeis
#19. Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.
Margaret Peterson Haddix
#20. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two [good and evil].
Abraham Lincoln
#21. When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people ... and ... becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression ... it is a ... sacred obligation to their posterity to abolish such government, and create another in its stead.
Sam Houston
#22. The essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens. Any government which assumes that the population is going to do something evil has already lost its franchise to govern.
Philip K. Dick
#23. The Founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil, to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.
Rand Paul
#24. The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.
Thomas Malthus
#25. I feel like the government is more evil than most corporations.
Gavin McInnes
#26. Bilderberger Meeting: The world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government ...
David Rockefeller
#27. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments.
Ludwig Von Mises
#28. The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.
Daniel Webster
#29. Men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved from men who are aggressive for what is wrong.
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
#30. The fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.
Hannah Arendt
#31. Unlike classical liberalism, which saw the government as a necessary evil, or simply a benign but voluntary social contract for free men to enter into willingly, the belief that the entire society was one organic whole left no room for those who didn't want to behave, let alone "evolve.
Jonah Goldberg
#32. There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
Abraham Lincoln
#33. Information technology alone cannot provide us an absolute shield against its evil twin disinformation technology. Our only protection is law, and that protection is available to us only if legitimate governments have the power to govern.
Paul Starr
#34. It is never right for any individual or government to do any vast evil as a means to some hypothetical good.
Leonard Woolf
#35. No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.
Peter Drucker
#36. God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.
Millard Fillmore
#37. Some people are good only because they are afraid of punishment. These justify why we need government
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#38. Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine
#40. It is an in, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order, for a larger and higher organisation, to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.
Pope Leo XIII
#41. The fundamental evil of government grants is the fact that men are forced to pay for the support of ideas diametrically opposed to their own. This is a profound violation of an individual's integrity and conscience.
Ayn Rand
#42. An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.
Anthony Burgess
#44. Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.
Walter Raleigh
#45. When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.
Euripides
#46. Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#47. If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.
William J. Clinton
#48. I believe you can divide the people in to two basic groups, those who believe government is a necessary good and those who believe it is a necessary evil, those who want government to take care of them, those who want government to leave them alone.
Lyn Nofziger
#49. Government should never be able to do anything you can't do. If you can't steal from your neighbor, you can't send the government to steal for you.
Ron Paul
#50. Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed.
Wendell Phillips
#52. Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.
William Godwin
#54. Teachers have power. We may cripple them by petty economics; by Government regulations, by the foolish criticism of an uninformed press; but their power exists for good or evil ...
Winifred Holtby
#55. I think the government is incompetent, not evil.
Adam Carolla
#56. I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and the people can be trusted to behave decently if you will only let them alone.
George Orwell
#57. It is among the evils, and perhaps not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel before they will see. When this happens they are roused to action. Hence it is that those kinds of government are so slow.
George Washington
#58. There are two principles between which there can be no compromise - liberty and coercion.
Frederic Bastiat
#59. The gross evil of our time defies all labels.
Edward Abbey
#60. Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect."
"Yes, it is. But it is politically correct."
(The Rise of Political Correctness)
Angelo Codevilla
#61. When any nation mistrusts it's citizens with guns, it's sending a clear message. It no longer trusts it's citizens because such a government has evil plans.
George Washington
#62. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst.
J. Edgar Hoover
#63. When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another - except brute, physical force.
Ayn Rand
#64. The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in spirit and energy it awakens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#65. To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.
Samuel Johnson
#66. The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
Walter E. Williams
#67. Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.
Lewis Cass
#68. We have to choose, and for my part I think it a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the government should play an ignoble part.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#69. Warren criticized as deplorable and unnecessary the use of arbitrarily inflicted punishments and the customary repressions of the school system; "The natural rewards and punishments of their conduct . . . I consider the only species of government that does not produce more evil than good."32
James J. Martin
#70. Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.
Philip K. Howard
#71. I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress.
Robert F. Kennedy
#72. God's original purpose for government was to punish the evil and reward the good.
William R. Bowen
#73. Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual.
Auberon Herbert
#74. Government is to minister as an instrument in the hand of God to promote justice and to punish evil.
R.C. Sproul
#75. All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.
Ayn Rand
#77. if you think the corporations are evil and it's the government's job to make them moral, you're deflecting your own responsibility to civics. You're making the government your big brother and the corporation the evil bully your big brother's supposed to keep off you at recess.
David Foster Wallace
#78. Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil ...
Howard Zinn
#79. I do admit to mocking atheists, because mockery is a legitimate form of debate according to my rule Book. God Himself mocks evil men who refuse His moral government (see Proverbs 1:26-27).
Ray Comfort
#80. The point of Political Correctness is not and has never been merely about any of the items that it imposes, but about the imposition itself. (The Rise of Political Correctness)
Angelo Codevilla
#81. The remedy for our social evils does not consist so much in changing the system of government as it does in increasing the general intelligence of the people so that they may learn how to govern.
Charles Lindbergh
#82. Private citizens and companies are always seen as evil and greedy, because they want to profit. But the government picks your pocket any chance it can get, but they're never called greedy.
Greg Gutfeld
#83. It is said that government is a necessary evil, but it is far more evil than it is necessary.
James Cook
#84. It is the function of God Rama to destroy evil, wherever it occurs and it is equally the function of God Rama to give to his devotees like Bibhishana a free charter of irrevocable self-government.
Mahatma Gandhi
#85. I know why we can't have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you're in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.
Steven Soderbergh
#86. The Second Amendment is timeless for our Founders grasped that self-defense is three-fold: every free individual must protect themselves against the evil will of the man, the mob and the state.
Tiffany Madison
#87. This part of Brazil offered the curious spectacle of a great evil, which has been long suffered to exist and is now advancing, gradually yet surely, to that state which must entail inevitable destruction on the existing Government of the country.
George Grey
#88. The ones who are insane enough to think that they can rule the world are always the ones who do.
Stefan Molyneux
#89. Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.
Fred Woodworth
#90. I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
H.L. Mencken
#91. This is what evil does; it makes choices for others in the name of religion, in the name of government, in the name of community, in the name of personal gain, that these individuals are best able to make for themselves.
John Kramer
#92. When we have run through all forms of government, without partiality to that we were born under, we are at a loss with which to side; they are all a compound of good and evil. It is therefore most reasonable and safe to value that of our own country above all others, and to submit to it.
Jean De La Bruyere
#93. The only greater [evil] than separation ... [is] living under a government of discretion.
Thomas Jefferson
#94. The government of freemen is nobler and implies more virtue than despotic government. Neither is a city to be deemed happy or a legislator to be praised because he trains his citizens to conquer and obtain dominion over their neighbors, for there is great evil in this.
Aristotle.
#95. I really don't think our school system is an evil borg force. It's sort of like the government. It's not even efficient enough to be a borg of total evil, even if it wanted to be.
Sandra Tsing Loh
#96. It is one of the evils of democratical governments, that the people, not always seeing and frequently misled, must often feel before they can act.
George Washington
#97. If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.
Ludwig Von Mises
#98. The best government in the world, the best religion, the best traditions of any people, depend upon the good or evil of the men and women who administer them.
Pearl S. Buck
#99. If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.
Margaret Atwood
#100. The source and root of all monetary evil [is] the government monopoly on the issue and control of money. - Friedrich Hayek
George Gilder