Quotes & Sayings About Local Self Government

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

The federal government neither has the power to site transmission lines, nor do we build them. That's done, as people know, in their own communities. The siting decisions and the permitting is done at the local level, or by state governments if it's interstate in nature. And federal government - this is one area we have no authority. — Spencer Abraham

The capacity of the commonwealth government created under the local constitution to exercise governmental powers in local affairs is like that of local government in the states of the union in regard to non-federal affairs at the local level. — Dick Thornburgh

What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost. — Calvin Coolidge

The Chinese Communist Party has seen fit to protect most property rights because it recognizes that it has a self-interest in doing so. But the party faces no legal constraints other than its own internal political controls if it decides to violate property rights. Many peasants find their land coveted by municipal authorities and developers who want to turn it into commercial real estate, high-density housing, shopping centers, and the like, or else into public infrastructure like roads, dams, or government offices. There are large incentives for developers to work together with corrupt local officials to illegally take land away from peasants or urban homeowners, and such takings have been perhaps the largest single source of social discontent in contemporary China.33 — Francis Fukuyama

Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress. — Dick Thornburgh

Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. — Jasper Fforde

Israel is a big provider of military technology to Brazil and this has caused a big breach in the two sides of the government. On the one hand, you have the diplomatic side. On the other side, Brazil's military has been quoted in the local press as being quite upset that this diplomatic standoff could affect the military relationship. — Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

In some of the middle colonies the towns and counties were both active and had a relation with each other which was the forerunner of the present system of local government in the Western States. — Albert Bushnell Hart

The majority of Taiwan people cannot accept Taiwan becoming a second Hong Kong, nor can we accept Taiwan becoming a local government of the People's Republic of China or a Special Administrative Region of China. — Chen Shui-bian

No doubt, some of the champions of local government hoped to preserve such unsavory local customs as slavery or the local rule of a small group of privileged men, but many of the defenders of local government argued honestly that the states presented the best hope of securing liberty. Liberty, in the eighteenth century, meant not simply liberty from some intrusive outside power. It meant the active exercise of control over one's life, the possession of power in one's own hands. It meant government small enough and close enough to home to be directly accountable and responsive. It meant self-government, not government handed over to some remote rulers. Strictly understood, the principle of local self-government meant a share of power more or less equal to everyone else's share of power, a citizenry more or less equal in wealth and status, not one dominated by one small group or another; that is to say, it meant democracy — Charles L. Mee Jr.

Local self-government ... is the life-blood of liberty. — John Lothrop Motley

Accuse American businessmen of being responsible for radicalism and they would indignantly deny the accusation. Yet, in one fundamental sense, they are responsible. They are responsible in the sense that they have utterly neglected to take part in the work and the organization which precede the choosing of candidates for political office. Local political organizations all over the land are conducted and controlled, as a rule, by politicians ... Businessmen have shirked such responsibilities, leaving an untrammeled field to others less capable of carrying on the administration of government. — B.C. Forbes

I think it true that, you know, sometimes things start to change even before a government changes and, actually, I think you can begin to see even the Labour machine beginning to understand that it has become over-reliant on targets and processes, that local governments have been over-bossed and bullied. — David Cameron

Governments have supported airlines as if they were local football teams. But there are just too many of them. This is the only industry I know that has lost money consistently and makes money infrequently. — Richard L. Hanna

A Local Government Stationery Store is something to behold. It's like walking through the back of a cupboard into a really dull Narnia. — Sally Phillips

Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government. — Grover Norquist

In ancient China, self-government was highly developed both in community life and in personal life. The custom of mutual protection and assistance was widespread. The organization and regulations of local self-government were clearly defined and strictly applied. Individual self-control was even more strongly emphasized. — Chiang Kai-shek

All agree that, the first responsibility for the alleviation of poverty and distress and for the care of the victims of the depression rests upon the locality - its individuals, organizations and Government. It rests, first of all, perhaps, upon the private agencies of philanthropy, secondly, other social organizations, and last, but not least, the Church. Yet all agree that to leave to the locality the entire responsibility would result in placing the heaviest burden in most cases upon those who are the least able to bear it. In other words, the communities that have the most difficult problem, like Detroit, would be the communities that would have to bear the heaviest of the burdens. And so the State should step in to equalize the burden by providing for a large portion of the care of the victims of poverty and by providing assistance and guidance for local communities. Above and beyond that duty of the States the national Government has a responsibility. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

[M]ore Americans work for federal, state or local government than work in any form of manufacturing. We crossed that Rubicon about 10 years ago. — Ann Coulter

We are reorganizing how we work with state and local governments to make sure that we are not prioritizing families [for deportation], and you are gonna see, I think, a substantial change even as the case works its way through the courts. — Barack Obama

I think we'll have a bigger conversation first within the Republican Party, then with the American people about what's the proper role of the federal government, i do hope that Common Core will be one more, one more reason for us to have this bigger debate, this bigger conversation about the proper role of the federal government in local education. — Bobby Jindal

A man can lead a reasonably full life without a family, a fixed local residence, or a religious affiliation, but if he is stateless he is nothing. He has no rights, no security, and little opportunity for a useful career. There is no salvation on earth outside the framework of an organized state. — Joseph Reese Strayer

Jealousy, and local policy mix too much in all our public councils for the good government of the Union. In a words, the confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance ... — George Washington

Local assemblies of the people constitute the strength of free nations. Municipal institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science: they bring it within the people's reach, and teach them how to use and enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Most historical accounts were written by fallible scholars, using incomplete or biased resource materials; written through the scholars' own conscious or unconscious predilections; published by textbook or printing companies that have a stake in maintaining a certain set of beliefs; subtly influenced by entities of government and society - national administrations, state education departments, local school boards, etcetera - that also wish to maintain certain sets of beliefs. To be blunt about it, much of the history of many countries and states is based on delusion, propaganda, misinformation, and omission. — James Alexander Thom

The president's very right about one thing: When you have a disaster of that scale, whether it be natural or a terrorist attack, there's only one part of our entire government, state or local, that is equipped to handle it, and that's the U.S. military. — Warren Rudman

Two thirds of federal disaster aid is weather related,and though we cannot prevent bad weather, we are getting better at predicting it. The Commerce Department's NDRI will help save lives and protect property. We will be working closely with FEMA, the Interior Department and other federal agencies, with state and local governments and with our nation's businesses. — William M. Daley

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

The Tea Party is simply a loose description of local activism driven by Americans who want smaller government and more self-reliance. That sounds like what the Founding Fathers had in mind, does it not? — Bill O'Reilly

There are always those who are willing to surrender local self-government and turn over their affairs to some national authority in exchange for a payment of money out of the Federal Treasury. Whenever they find some abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying the remedy themselves they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom. — Calvin Coolidge

A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon. — Edward Abbey

On the rare occasions when a reporter asks if a criminal is an immigrant, government officials summarily dismiss the question as if it would be racist to discuss the defendant's nation of birth. Ricardo DeLeon Flores killed a teenaged girl in Kansas after speeding through a stop sign and crashing into two cars. "When asked whether Flores was a U.S. citizen," the local Kansas newspaper reported, "Deborah Owens of the Leavenworth County Attorney's Office said she had no knowledge of his citizenship status."33 Was the Spanish translator a hint? The ICE officials showing up in court? His Oakland Raiders T-shirt? Two families' lives were forever changed by the reckless behavior of someone who should not have been in this country, but the prosecutor refused to tell a reporter that Flores was an illegal immigrant. Owens must have felt a warm rush of self-righteousness, thinking how much better she is than all those blood-and-soil types who want to know when foreigners kill Americans. — Ann Coulter

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

The world is full of interiors that bleach the spirit. Hospitals, police stations, job centres, local government offices and prisons all have their own subtle type of vampire colour scheme and black-hole furnishing, capable by accident or design of wiping away a person's self-esteem and will to resist, like boiled-over soup off a ceramic hob. — Tom Holt

Nations are beginning to look to some vague organization, some nebulous course of humanity, to pay their bills and tell them what to do. This is not local self-government. It is not American. It is not the method which has made this country what it is. We can not maintain the western standard of civilization on that theory. If it is supported at all, it will have to be supported on the principle of individual responsibility. — Calvin Coolidge

Based on my experience as a prosecutor in Miami, illegal immigration is one of the most critical issues facing this country. As a prosecutor, I felt the burden of it. I think what's important ... is for the state and the federal government and for local governments to work together to do everything possible to control illegal immigration in a comprehensive way. — Janet Reno

I think the over-militarization of local police forces is also true of the over-militarization of the federal government, so I don't really run and hide from the comment that I think there are 48 federal agencies that have SWAT teams. — Rand Paul

I am delighted to be involved in the digital divide campaign to ensure that every school is made aware of what steps it can take to address the digital divide as it affects local children, and provide a range of opportunities for ICT suppliers, government agencies, charities and other organisations to make a contribution. — Estelle Morris, Baroness Morris Of Yardley

Every family in America knows they have to do a budget. Every small business in America knows they have to do a budget. Every local government, every state, knows they have to do a budget. — John Boehner

There were moments of racial unity. Lawrence Goodwyn found in east Texas an unusual coalition of black and white public officials: it had begun during Reconstruction and continued into the Populist period. The state government was in the control of white Democrats, but in Grimes County, blacks won local offices and sent legislators to the state capital. The district clerk was a black man; there were black deputy sheriffs and a black school principal. A night-riding White Man's Union used intimidation and murder to split the coalition, but Goodwyn points to "the long years of interracial cooperation in Grimes County" and wonders about missed opportunities. — Howard Zinn

We have to allow people in the states to make their own decisions, to get government agencies out of the way and let local people make decisions about what's best for them. — Pete Sessions

It's traditionally not federal policy to fund state and local salaries. It's done sometimes on a temporary basis or a grant basis. But it's not often done. And the reason is clear, because the federal government can't continue in perpetuity these programs. — Jim Talent

Unlike in the Northern states, the only elected officials in Virginia were federal congressmen and state legislators; all the rest were either selected by the legislature or appointed by the governor or the county courts, which were self-perpetuating oligarchies that dominated local government. Thus popular democratic politics in Virginia and elsewhere in the South was severely limited, especially in contrast to the states of the North, where nearly all state and local offices had become elective and the turbulence of politics and the turnover of offices were much greater. — Gordon S. Wood

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life - the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools - even universities - are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave. — Alvin Toffler

The ultimate end is a nation that lies under the concept of the Declaration of Indepen dence. The Declaration of Independence is such an extraordinary statement - it was designed by people skeptical of government, local or national, but in particular national. — Malcolm Wallop

He learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. — Upton Sinclair

I shall work with Congress, civil society groups and local government executives who are convinced that charter changes are needed to enable the country to surmount the unprecedented challenges of the 21st century. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

The simple index fund solution has been adopted as a cornerstone of investment strategy for many of the nation's pension plans operated by our giant corporations and state and local governments. Indexing is also the predominant strategy for the largest of them all, the retirement plan for federal government employees, the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The plan has been a remarkable success, and now holds some $173 billion of assets for the benefit of our public servants and members of armed services. — David F. Swensen

When people believe that the local government and economy serve their needs. There is little desire to protest. — Auliq Ice

You can have very big local government. By big, I mean very engaged government. Do you measure it in terms of the number of laws? Number of employees? You could make arguments for either one. I tend to think the axis of the size of government is the wrong concern. But I do think that situating power more locally is a legitimate approach. — Zephyr Teachout

The founders understood that democracy would inevitably evolve into a system of legalized plunder unless the plundered were given numerous escape routes and constitutional protections such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, election of senators by state legislators, the electoral college, no income taxation, most governmental functions performed at the state and local levels, and myriad other constitutional limitations on the powers of the central government. — Thomas DiLorenzo

After four centuries of Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898. Residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, and the federal government has allowed Puerto Rico to exercise authority over its local affairs in a manner similar to the 50 states. — Pedro Pierluisi

During the election in 1989, there was the first Soviet election with alternative candidates to local government. I myself arranged special training for them. — Anatoly Chubais

There's much more we can be doing in Parliament, we could be giving more power back to people at local government level, through local referendums. — Theresa May

Today government touches everything in America and harms almost everything it touches. Federal, state, and local governments together spend 42 out of every 100 dollars we earn. Those who do the taxing and spending have long since ceased to work for the people as a whole. Rather, they work for themselves and for their clients-the education industry, the welfare culture, public-employee unions, etc.. — Malcolm Wallop

Mature citizens have to sink or swim by themselves. Citizens are on their own and have to prove their responsibility and self-reliance. They have become the leaders in their own family units (or local communities). They have to, and are competent to, make their own decisions. They have to protect themselves and their families (or communities). They know what is good for them better than their government, which is distant from them. A good government does not meddle or interfere in their lives. Any governmental meddling or interfering is strongly resented. Here — George Lakoff

We have been getting ready to recycle more e-waste by investing in infrastructure, providing grants to local government and working with industry. — Jay Weatherill

We believed that growth through Local Government, and perhaps through some special machinery for bringing the wishes and influence of women of all classes to bear on Parliament, other than the Parliamentary vote, was the real line of progress. — Mary Augusta Ward

While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs, - an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea, - no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature. — Frederick Douglass

So the years passed and everyone grew old and Nell's husband died and Hilda grew to be a large, angry sort of woman very high up in local government. When Nell was eighty-four Hilda retired and they went to live at a sea-side place where Hilda had had meaningful holidays during the menopause with a woman called Audrey, now dead. — Jane Gardam

The poor don't live in functional market economies as the rest of us do, but in political economies where corruption and broken systems extend from local government to moneylenders. — Jacqueline Novogratz

The U.S. government uses cash accounting. That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam. — Jim Cooper

I firmly believe this ... that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest. — Benjamin Franklin