Top 100 Self Government Quotes
#1. Anything that grows is, by definition, alive. Washington, D.C. was no exception. As a living organism, the Federal Government's number one job was self-preservation. Any threat to its existence had to be dealt with.
Brad Thor
#2. A timeline for bringing U.S. troops home that is negotiated with the Iraqi government would also boost the Iraqi government's legitimacy and claim to self-rule, and force the Iraqi government to take responsibility for itself and its citizens.
Peter DeFazio
#3. We make a great mistake in supposing all people are capable of self-government.
John C. Calhoun
#4. Freedom and Liberty cannot exist without Individual Responsibilty. Failure to exercise Individual Responsibilty forfeits your right to self-governance and delivers it to Government which, through force, will set the parameters of your life.
Brian Wilson
#5. The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#6. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Thomas Jefferson
#7. Self-rule means that China must stop its intensive effort to colonize Tibet with Chinese settlers and must allow Tibetans to hold responsible positions in the government of Tibet.
Dalai Lama
#8. Dictatorship played a decisive role in the North's successful effort to maintain the Union by force of arms ... one man was the government of the United States ... Lincoln was a great dictator ... This great constitutional dictator was self appointed.
Clinton Rossiter
#9. There can be no self-government without self-discipline. There can be no self-government without self-control. There can be no liberty unless it is grounded in moral discipline and the ability to do what is right.
Alan Keyes
#10. Belize is not ready for self-government.
John McAfee
#11. The shadow that comes with postmodernism is a profound self-involvement. We lose all perspective on the collective endeavors that have made the extraordinarily lives we live possible.
James M. Fallows
#12. The danger to a free society is not the guns owned by the citizens but an unconstrained government ... An armed society is a self-governing society, just as a disarmed people are vulnerable to arbitrary power of every kind.
Llewellyn Rockwell
#13. Good government is no substitute for self-government.
Mahatma Gandhi
#14. I am a political animal, because for God's sakes I think "We The People" is a job. I think experienced self government demands on all levels - intellectual, moral, historical, and spiritual level. We are supposed to be engaged and give directions to our elected employees.
Ted Nugent
#15. It's not in the interests of the self-serving government to educate the masses to the point where they are smart enough to see through the bullshit - because then people will be too smart to vote for them again.
Christina Engela
#16. My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility
Camille Paglia
#17. The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.
Thomas Jefferson
#18. In my opinion, a war between England and Germany was a war between brothers. In my inner self I admired the English government and political system.
Walter Schellenberg
#19. None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealist Americans to public service that our citizens deserved and that our system of self-government demands.
Barack Obama
#20. An easily manipulated population that cares mostly for its own amusement may be more ready for tyranny (which can keep the masses happy with "bread and circuses") than for the arduous responsibilities of self-government.
Gene Edward Veith Jr.
#21. That future depends on the values of self-government, our sense of duty, loyalty, self-confidence and regard for the common good. We are a diverse country, and getting more diverse. And these virtues are what keep this great country together.
Jeff Miller
#22. The Popular Unity government represented the first attempt anywhere to build a genuinely democratic transition to socialism a socialism that, owing to its origins, might be guided not by authoritarian bureaucracy, but by democratic self-rule.
Salvador Allende
#23. Self-government will not work unless the citizens bear the responsibility to vote in such a way that continues their freedoms and their ability to have free elections, that continues their economic prosperity. They have to vote in a way that does not trade the future for the present. This
Eric Metaxas
#24. It is not yet too late for the Indian people to decide on rapid, ordered progress. I can assure them that the British people are as determined upon self-government for India as they are themselves.
Stafford Cripps
#25. We have a duty to look after each other. If we lose control of our government, then we lose our ability to dispense justice and human kindness. Our first priority today, then, is to defeat utterly those forces of greed and corruption that have come between us and our self-governance.
Doris "Granny D" Haddock
#26. To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of government.
Theodore Roosevelt
#27. Crime is a human behavior problem, not a mechanical problem. Furthermore, if firearms were not very useful for self-defense, then police wouldn't carry them. In a free country, if the government can go armed, so should the citizens, if they so choose.
Charley Reese
#28. We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage of a Government we seek to end, if it will not mend.
Mahatma Gandhi
#29. Before a community can prosper, the people must believe in their leaders. They must know that at the core of every decision is careful planning, hard work, and unbending integrity rather than partisanship or self-gain. They must trust that the awesome power of government is not being abused.
Linda Lingle
#30. The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
Milton Friedman
#31. You should not be subjected to the pressures, the intimidation, whether by Government or by the private sector, which would force you into self-censorship.
Alfred-Maurice De Zayas
#32. The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.
Bella Abzug
#33. The picture of bankers slavering after bonuses soon after they had been rescued by government bailouts was not only outrageous but also pitiable - pitiable because they were clamoring for their primary measure of self-worth and status to be restored
Raghuram G. Rajan
#34. For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift
#35. Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help ...
Mahatma Gandhi
#36. We are in a degenerate state of self-government. In fact, even to use the words self-government, is not only an exaggeration, it's a lie. It's a big lie!
Jerry Brown
#37. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries.
Thomas Jefferson
#38. Effective self-government cannot succeed unless the people are immersed in a steady, robust, unimpeded, and uncensored flow of opinion and reporting which are continuously subjected to critique, rebuttal, and reexamination.
William O. Douglas
#39. If we cannot count on ourselves to do the right thing how can we count on anyone or anything else? Self-government won't work without self-discipline.
Paul Harvey
#40. When the government pays, health care's lack of affordability becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In health care, as in other things, government is the high-cost producer.
Arnold Kling
#41. [I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.
Elizabeth I
#42. As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and self-serving.
John Stossel
#43. It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals.
Lysander Spooner
#44. Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class.
Giuseppe Prezzolini
#45. ANARCHY, or the government of each man by himself or as the English say, self -government.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
#46. Who is the NRA anyway? They are usually middle-income people who only think of themselves, who want to have no government, really, except self-rule by themselves. I think that little cracks are starting to emerge in the NRA armor.
Joycelyn Elders
#47. I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
#48. Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)
As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57
Orit Badouk Epstein
#49. The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility and out of self interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state.
Ron Paul
#50. Freedom comes to those who don't apply for it.
T.F. Hodge
#51. Self-ruled Taiwan cannot be expected to accept such an affront to the legitimacy of its government and the self-determination of the Taiwanese people.
Todd Akin
#52. As I get older ... I become more convinced that good government is not a substitute for self-government.
Dwight Morrow
#53. [It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.
Thomas Jefferson
#54. Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability.
Benjamin Harrison
#55. Are you a Loyalist or a Patriot? Why, because being a God-fearing, self-reliant, freedom-loving American is a choice. Or we could be one of those government-dependent, Constitution-fearing socialists. That's the question, actually, the Founding Fathers asked. Are you a Loyalist or a Patriot?
Matt Shea
#56. The basis of self-government and freedom requires the development of character and self-restraint and perseverance and the long view. And these are qualities which require many years of training and education.
John F. Kennedy
#57. Democratic self-government has manifestly brought benefits to India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, and scores of nations all making their way in the world.
Michael Gove
#58. We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.
James A. Garfield
#59. By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government.
Todd Akin
#60. The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#61. There are self-styled "anarcho-capitalists" (not to be confused with anarchists of any persuasion), who want the state abolished as a regulator of capitalism, and government handed over to capitalists.
Donald Rooum
#62. A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and incapacitates psychopaths, bullies and hotheads - and if it earns the confidence of the people, they don't have to become violent in self-defence.
Steven Pinker
#63. The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and laws, and, therefore, an administrative government of its own.
Charles Hodge
#64. No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline.
Calvin Coolidge
#65. Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self-defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that.
Jane Addams
#66. Our forefathers found the evils of free thinking more to be endured than the evils of inquest or suppression. This is because thoughtful, bold and independent minds are essential to the wise and considered self-government.
Robert H. Jackson
#67. It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does.
Eric Robert Morse
#68. We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami. Central banks and governments are being required to take unprecedented measures. Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.
Alan Greenspan
#69. May it be to the world ... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
Thomas Jefferson
#70. Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly "free" state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot.
Tiffany Madison
#71. If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.
Alexander Hamilton
#72. Years ago on my radio show, I used to say, 'I'm a conservative, but I'm not in a bad mood about it.' I've always believed that civility in heavy doses is essential in self-government.
Mike Pence
#73. I have a job to pay attention. It is my number one duty as a human being - to earn an experiment in self-government every day by spotlighting cockroaches who violate their oath to the US constitution and wipe their ass with the US Constitution
Ted Nugent
#74. Self government is no less essential to the development, growth, and happiness of the individual than to the nation.
William H. Douglas
#75. Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#76. If the government announced that it was going to allocate a vast tranche of education funding purely to the pupils at the best public schools, there would be a national outcry - and yet this is precisely what the Olympics represents in terms of sports funding.
Will Self
#77. We have pledged ourselves, and of this the United Nations of the world are witness, to give the fullest opportunity for attainment of self-government by India as soon as hostilities are over. I repeat that that is beyond doubt.
Stafford Cripps
#78. For so long Marianne and Albrecht and many of their friends had known Hitler was a lunatic, a leader whose lowbrow appeal to people's most selfish, self-pitying emotions and ignorance was an embarrassment for their country.
Jessica Shattuck
#79. It is possible I can make very little of myself; but this little is everything, and better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State.
Max Stirner
#80. Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
H.L. Mencken
#81. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government - that is despotism.
Abraham Lincoln
#82. Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate.
Herbert Hoover
#83. Self-government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. The republican form of government is the noblest and the best, as it is the latest.
Henry Ward Beecher
#84. It is often said that our modern world is incapable of self-government.
Robert A. Agresta
#85. Liberty demands self-government, but not the right to interfere with others.
Bertrand Russell
#86. Men should do their actual living and working in communities small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in such a way that the temptation to abuse great power should not arise.
Mahatma Gandhi
#87. A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.
Cass Sunstein
#88. The war ... must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks ... unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.
Jefferson Davis
#89. It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.
Rick Scott
#90. Quite simply, there can be no popular sovereignty without a real belief in the value of government. If government does not assume and carry out public responsibilities, less accountable institutions such as the corporation will do the job in their own self-interest.
Charles Derber
#91. The nature of business and government has been to build a surplus and self-perpetuate, but the Internet fosters and rewards smaller, more fluid organizations.
Esther Dyson
#92. In historical and constitutional terms, the recent political status vote in Puerto Rico was a necessary but obviously not decisive step on the road of self-determination leading to full self-government.
Dick Thornburgh
#93. The advent of self-government for the Iraqi people is a watershed moment in their history.
Todd Akin
#94. Complete self-government for the province [gubernia and region], district and community through bureaucrats elected by universal suffrage; the abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state.
Vladimir Lenin
#95. Self-certification may look like a small vision but there cannot be a greater decision for a Government to trust the honesty of the 1.25 billion people of the country.
Narendra Modi
#96. 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
#97. There is no happiness without liberty, no liberty without self-government, no self-government without constitutionalism, no constitutionalism without morality
and none of these great goods without stability and order.
Clinton Rossiter
#98. I used to believe the government was the answer to all our problems. But the ... government, I've concluded, is now aninsufferable jungle of self-serving bureaucrats.
Chet Huntley
#99. We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.
Kwame Nkrumah
