Quotes & Sayings About Government Force

All Governments rest mainly on public opinion, and to that of his own subjects every wise Sovereign will look. The opinion of his subjects will force a Sovereign to do his duty, and by that opinion will he be exalted or depressed in the politics of the world. — Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear. — Ayn Rand

I have long believed the city, the country, indeed the world at large to be run by precisely the wrong kind of people. From the government to the great financial institutions, the peerage to the police force, our lives are controlled without exception by the stupid and greedy, the venal, the rapacious and the undeservedly rich. How much more comfortable would it be if the rulers of the world were not the cognoscenti of the bank balance, the ballot box, the offshore account, but were drawn instead from the ranks of the everyday - honest, kind, stout-hearted, commonplace folk. — Jonathan Barnes

Government, in it's last analysis, is organized force. — Woodrow Wilson

All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if you think, as I do, that to force the government's hand is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work. Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise the value they put on human life. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

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

The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood. — Michael Hastings

Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other. — Harry Browne

Let us admit that we have attended parties where for one brief night a republic of gratified desires was attained. Shall we not confess that the politics of that night have more reality and force for us than those of, say, the entire U.S. Government? Some of the "parties" we've mentioned lasted for two or three years. Is this something worth imagining, worth fighting for? Let us study invisibility, webworking, psychic nomadism
and who knows what we might attain? — Hakim Bey

Palo's three older brothers had died in the Paraguayan War, conscripted by the Argentinian government, taken off by force along with all the black men of their generation, because, Palo told young Santiago, they needed a way to not only win their war but also rid this country of us in the process, two birds with one stone. Buenos Aires was too black for them, one third of the population, that's enough blackness to swallow you up! to get strong on you! and so they sent our fathers off to war and opened floodgates to European steamships so that white men would pour into the city to replace us, and their plan worked, the bastarda, look at our city now. — Carolina De Robertis

Arbitrary government operating by force, by terror, must destroy the best, the boldest dissenters in sheer self-defence; soon it finds itself destroying all who, on the one hand, do not actively assist it or, on the other, do not passively submit. — Edward Crankshaw

To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life. — Thomas Jefferson

With only three executive departments, each secretary wielded considerable power. Moreover, departmental boundaries were not well defined, allowing each secretary to roam across a wide spectrum of issues. This was encouraged by Washington, who frequently requested opinions from his entire cabinet on an issue. It particularly galled Jefferson that Hamilton, with his keen appetite for power, poached so frequently on his turf. In fact, Hamilton's opinions were so numerous and his influence so pervasive that most historians regard him as having been something akin to a prime minister. If Washington was head of state, then Hamilton was the head of government, the active force in the administration. — Ron Chernow

Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first. Secondly, it is to teach them. Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Evelyn tried to control people by controlling weapons, but Jeanine was more ambitious - she knew that when you control information, or manipulate it, you don't need force to keep people under your thumb. They stay there willingly. That is what the Bureau - and the entire government, probably - is doing: conditioning people to be happy under its thumb. — Anonymous

The question isn't whether we 'need' guns. It's wether the government should have a monopoly on force — Ann Coulter

Force plays a much larger part in the government of the world than it did before 1914, and what is especially alarming, force tends increasingly to fall into the hands of those who are enemies of civilization. — Bertrand Russell

The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

The sheer novelty and glamor of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power - thirty-two billion dollars a year - used to sell us those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat. — Michael Pollan

Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons? — Socrates

His request to those listening was to start every day knowing that each minute lost is one that they will never get back and use that thought to drive them forward. This is what resonates most with this writer about our beloved Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, he is a force of positive energy that the world is in dire need of. Therefore, when people ponder about what it is that makes the government of the United Arab Emirates different one can safely reach the conclusion that, Mohammed Bin Rashid is the difference. — Aysha Taryam

His secretary heard Lincoln authoritatively remind a caller on November 15 that "this government possesses both the authority and the power to maintain its own integrity." Here was Jacksonian firmness to spare. "That, however, is not the ugly point of this matter," Lincoln added grimly. "The ugly point is the necessity of keeping the government by force, as ours ought to be a government of fraternity. — Harold Holzer

Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business ... the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products. — Noam Chomsky

Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error, or rather that common consent in vice which these worthy men would have to be law. — John Calvin

To pump up consumer or government demand would force interest rates up and asset prices down, possibly by enough to destroy more jobs than are created. — Edmund Phelps

I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One. And my objective was to force the federal government - the Kennedy administration at that time - into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen. — James Meredith

Home schoolers do not wish to force other parents to home school. Gun owners do not insist that others buy guns, or that hunting be promoted as an alternative lifestyle. It is not the National Rifle Association out lobbying to have government schools read books entitled 'Heather Has Two Hunters' to preschoolers. It is, in fact, the Left that now strives to use state power to impose its morality by forcing all taxpayers to pay for abortions and public "art" that mocks people of faith. It is the Left that forces parents to pay for government schools where they do not wish to send their children. — Grover Norquist

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God's government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. Only by love is love awakened. To know God is to love Him; — Ellen G. White

Government has a monopoly on the legal use of force and violence. — David D. Aitken

We live in a regime built on force and lies. In essence, it's the same here as in Uzbekistan, except the government here is better at presenting itself to the outside world. — Isa Gambar

All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire. — Vilfredo Pareto

If sanity ever returns to our society and we stop taking pretentious elites seriously, one of the signs will be that the public will force the removal of those ugly pieces of twisted metal that are called 'art' in front of government buildings. — Thomas Sowell

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

John Brown's zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him. The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery. — Frederick Douglass

In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force — Frantz Fanon

I don't believe that humans can be reduced to homo economicus, but as a group, government officials are remarkably sensitive to financial, political, and reputational costs. Thus, when new technologies appear to reduce the costs of using lethal force, their threshold for deciding to use lethal force correspondingly drops.
If killing a suspected terrorist in Yemen or Somalia or Libya will endanger expensive manned aircraft, the lives of U.S. troops, and/or the lives of many innocent civilians, officials will reserve such killings for situations of extreme urgency and gravity (stopping another 9/11, getting Osama bin Laden). But if all that appears to be at risk is a an easily replaceable drone, officials will be tempted to use lethal force more and more casually. — Rosa Brooks

The fundamental force behind the Second Amendment is to empower the people and give them the greatest measure of authority over the tyranny of runaway government. — Bob Schaffer

You don't know that. And now we never will." "We're agents of the United States government, not some Third World dictator's private security force. That is not the way we work. We don't have — Marcus Sakey

Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary, — Hal Turner

The one thing government has which we (you or I or any corporation) DON'T have, is the ability to use deadly force to accomplish its goals. — Neal Boortz

No man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man-or group or society or government-has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. — Ayn Rand

But, curiously, Peter did not grasp - perhaps he did not wish to grasp - the political implications of this new view of man. He had not gone to the West to study "the art of government." Although in Protestant Europe he was surrounded by evidence of the new civil and political rights of individual men embodied in constitutions, bills of rights and parliaments, he did not return to Russia determined to share power with his people. On the contrary, he returned not only determined to change his country but also convinced that if Russia was to be transformed, it was he who must provide both the direction and the motive force. He would try to lead; but where education and persuasion were not enough, he would drive - and if necessary flog - the backward nation forward. — Robert K. Massie

Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind. — Edmund Burke

Examples out of History, of People free and in the State of Nature, that being met together incorporated and began a Common-wealth. And if the want of such instances be an argument to prove that Government were not, nor could not be so begun, I suppose the contenders for Parernal Empire were better let it alone, than urge it against natural Liberty. For if they can give so many instances out of History, of Governments begun upon Paternal Right, I think (though at best an Argument from what has been, to what should of right be, has no great force) one might, without any great danger, yield them the cause. But if I might advise the Original of Governments, as they have begun de facto, lest they should find at the foundation of most of them, something very little favourable to the design they promote, and such a power as they contend for. — John Locke

A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences. — Alexander Hamilton

It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of gunpoint; if the taxpayer refuses to pay, his assets are seized by force, and if he should resist such depredation, he will be arrested or shot if he should continue to resist. — Murray N. Rothbard

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. — Thomas Jefferson

Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added. Radar tapped a locker twice with his fist to show his approval, and then came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force. — John Green

What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment. — Alexander Berkman

Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, — G.K. Chesterton

What was to be a relatively innocuous federal government, operating from a defined enumeration of specific grants of power, has become an ever-present and unaccountable force. It is the nation's largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider, and pension guarantor. Moreover, with aggrandized police powers, what it does not control directly it bans or mandates by regulation. — Mark R. Levin

We have built as a government something called the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, NCIJTF, where 19 federal agencies sit together and divide up the work. See the threat, see the challenge, divide it up and share information. — James Comey

Barack Obama's enemies are the people who make this country work. Barack Obama's enemies are those who succeed. Those are the people whose income he wants to redistribute. Those are the people whose income he wants to take, using the power and the force of the federal government to do it. — Rush Limbaugh

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. — Alexander Hamilton

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

In the absence of government each man learns to think, to act for himself, without counting on the support of an outside force which, however vigilant one supposes it to be, can never answer all social needs. Man, thus accustomed to seek his well-being only through his own efforts, raises himself in his own opinion as he does in the opinion of others; his soul becomes larger and stronger at the same time. — Alexis De Tocqueville

If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it, to take their money by force for your own needs, then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you. — Neal Boortz

Jesus would never use government surrogates to force the people to help others. — Philip Freneau

Government can only do two things: It can beat people up and kill them. Or it can threaten to do so. When it seems to be doing something else - for example, handing out money or, say, surplus cheese - what's actually going on is that something has been taken away from one set of individuals by deadly force or the threat of deadly force, a hefty middleman's fee deducted, and whatever is left thrown to peasants delighted to receive stolen goods. — L. Neil Smith

A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves. — Thomas B. Macaulay

All governments, even these precious "democracies," derive all their power by force. Do something the government doesn't want, like, say, cross the street against the light, refuse to submit to its authority, and it won't be long before they'll use some form of force, usually a weapon and the threat of death or injury, to compel you to comply. — S. Evan Townsend

Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government. — Thomas Jefferson

We demand that the government of Canada force Stockwell Day to change his first name to Doris. Why do this, you may ask? Because it'll be fun. — Rick Mercer

I think the purpose of government is for a population to accomplish its mutually agreed-upon goals without every citizen having to accomplish those goals for him- or herself. Some examples: we have a police force so we don't need to have vigilante mobs. We have a post office so we don't need to deliver our own mail across the entire nation. We have a fire department so we don't have to put out our own fires.
In return for the services we agree on, we pay a fee.
We just don't all agree on what the services and what the fees should be.
I personally think it's sad we don't all agree on single-payer health care. We agree on paying taxes to save a house from fire but not a body from cancer? Why do we care more about our property than about ourselves? — Robert Peate

I think it was absolutely a mistake for President Obama and Harry Reid to force a government shutdown. — Ted Cruz

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

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this
that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. — Lysander Spooner

The Iraqi government had an army with 350,000 soldiers on which it had spent $41.6 billion in the three years since 2011. But this force melted away without significant resistance. Discarded uniforms and equipment were found strewn along the roads leading — Patrick Cockburn

It's easy to say, let's go in and get the bad guys. But you have a divided country of Sunnis and Shias. The United States goes and takes action there on behalf of the Iraqi government. You've got Iran coming in and saying we're going to stand with (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri) al-Maliki, so now we're aligning ourselves with Iran, and if we do air strikes, becoming de facto air force for them. — Tulsi Gabbard

Some of the worst abuses of government force in recent years were precipitated by technical and victimless gun-law violations. For example, the BATF claimed that the Branch Davidians possessed machine guns without paying the required federal tax and filling in the proper registration forms. So a tax case worth less than $10,000 led to a 76-man helicopter, machine gun, and grenade assault on a home in which 2/3 of the occupants were women and children. — Dave Kopel

If you can't even manage to to force your own presumably democratic governments to allow you to do good things for yourselves, then you probably deserve to become extinct. — Ishmael

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

This sympathy is not translated into force against the British government because it is not like the anti- apartheid movement which had a high profile here and Mandela is a more engaging figure than Yasser Arafat. — Tom Paulin

The right way is the greatest gratifier of human wishes ever come upon - when allowed to operate. It is as morally sound as the Golden Rule. It is the way of willing exchange, of common consent, of self-responsibility, of open opportunity. It respects the right of each to the product of his labor. It limits the police force to keeping the peace. It is the way of the free market, private property, limited government. On its banner is emblazoned Individual Liberty. — Leonard Read

History is the same story with different costumes. — Stefan Molyneux

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says "state" means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. — Ludwig Von Mises

But people try love and because they are unconscious ... their longing is good, but their love is full of jealousy, full of possessiveness, full of anger, full of nastiness. Soon they destroy it. Hence for centuries they have depended on marriage. Better to start by marriage so that the law can protect you from destroying it. The society, the government, the court, the policeman, the priest, they will all force you to live in the institution of marriage, and you will be just a slave. If marriage is an institution, you are going to be a slave in it. Only slaves want to live in institutions. — Rajneesh

Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily. — Harry Browne

There's more private security in the United States than there are publicly funded forces, like police. What you don't want is a meld of government and commerce - you really want to keep those two things separate - because once you have that meld, you've got megacorruption, and you have no third force to whom you can say this stuff is poisoning our kids. — Margaret Atwood

Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them. — Emile Zola

Governments ... should not force and govern belief, which is a matter for the heart and conscience not for temporal authorities. — Katharina Zell

Astute social commentators had been anticipating this rightward shift since the early 1980s. Bertram Gross predicted, in his book Friendly Fascism, that the United States might arrive at a gentler form of the virulent ultranationalism, antilabor activity, and racism, which coalesced into fascism in Europe in the 1930s. Corporate America would tolerate such a rightward drift, so the argument went, because more government restrictions on personal freedom would enhance business efforts to discipline the labor force and increase corporate profits. — Steve Brouwer

The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God ... then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) - the standard of self-law or autonomy. And when autonomous laws come to govern a commonwealth, the sword is certainly wielded in vain, for it represents simply the brute force of some men's will against the will of other men. — Greg L. Bahnsen

To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Notwithstanding our boastful assertions to the world, for nearly a century, that our government was based on the consent of the people, it rests upon force, as much as any government that ever existed. - Robert E. Lee — William C. Davis

Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth. — Clarence Darrow

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

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. — George Washington

Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. — Robert A. Heinlein

After my time working for the government as a soldier, I reacquainted myself with the possibilities of government as a force for good beyond its awesome capacity as a force in war and security. — Wes Moore

Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail. — John C. Calhoun

Contemporary American politics also revolve around this contradiction. Democrats want a more equitable society, even if it means raising taxes to fund programmes to help the poor, elderly and infirm. But that infringes on the freedom of individuals to spend their money as they wish. Why should the government force me to buy health insurance if I prefer using the money to put my kids through college? Republicans, on the other hand, want to maximise individual freedom, even if it means that the income gap between rich and poor will grow wider and that many Americans will not be able to afford health care. — Yuval Noah Harari

The American Dream was not about government's taking huge sums of money (under the label of "taxation") from citizens by force. The American Dream was about individualism and the opportunity to achieve success without interference from others. — Robert Ringer

The tax that was supposed to soak the rich has instead soaked America. The beneficiary of the income tax has not been the poor, but big government. The income tax has given us a government bureaucracy that outnumbers the manufacturing work force. It has created welfare dependencies that have entrapped millions of Americans in an underclass that is forced to live a sordid existence of trading votes for government handouts. — Paul Craig Roberts

When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice... I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did.

{The Anas, February 1, 1800, written shortly after the death of first US president George Washington} — Thomas Jefferson

To paraphrase Hemingway, people go broke slowly and then all at once. We've been slowly going broke for years, but now it's happening all at once as the world's capital markets are demanding action from us, yet Obama assumes we'll just go borrow another cup of sugar from some increasingly impatient neighbor. We cannot knock on anyone's door anymore. And we don't have any time to wait for Washington to start behaving responsibly. We'll be Greece before these D.C. politicians' false promises are over. We must force government to live within its means, just as every business and household does. — Sarah Palin

We imagined that the mildness of our government and the wishes of the people were so correspondent that we were not as other nations, requiring brutal force to support the laws. — Henry Knox

Pro bono has been abused as a cover and I detest those who do that because pro bono is such a noble thing to do. I have done a lot of pro bono work from the time I started my practice, never boasted about it, never got much publicity out of it. But every time when I see some people being interviewed regarding their pro bono work, I laugh because even the Government is coming into the picture. They had considered forcing all lawyers to do pro bono work. Pro bono is something that comes from your heart. You should have the desire to help. It should not be forced upon you. The authorities don't realise this. The moment you force pro bono on lawyers, you take away the meaning of pro bono. Those who are genuinely concerned and do pro bono also will be classified as people who have to do it because they have been told to do so. — Subhas Anandan