#government

Rome tolerated every abominable practice, embraced every foul idea in the name of freedom and the rights of the common man. Citizens no longer carried on deviant behavior in private, but pridefully displayed it in public. It was those with moral values who could no longer freely walk in a public park without having to witness a revolting display. What happened to the public censors who protected the majority of citizenry from moral decadence? Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? Did freedom mean anyone could do anything they wanted anytime they wanted, without consequences? ↗

— Francine Rivers

#history #freedom

I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of taking away your freedoms. –Uncle Sam
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— Jarod Kintz

#government #liberty #oppression #uncle-sam #freedom

[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 Tudor

#dignity #freedom #good-governance #government #independence

Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can. ↗

— Arthur Koestler

#government #freedom

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots. ↗

— Rudolf Rocker

#freedom #government #privileges #rights #struggle

A real patriot doesn’t unconditionally stick up for his government—he stands up for freedom.
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— Jarod Kintz

#government #patriot #patriotic #freedom

Thus, seeking to produce a typology of forms of the art of government, La Mothe Le Vayer, in a text from the following century (consisting of educational writings intended for the French Dauphin), says that there are three fundamental types of government, each of which relates to a particular science or discipline: the art of self-government, connected with morality; the art of properly governing a family, which belongs to economy; and finally the science of ruling the state, which concerns politics. What matters, notwithstanding this typology, is that the art of government is always characterized by the essential continuity of one type with the other, and of second type with the third. ↗

— Michel Foucault

#art

We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government." [Dissenting, Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 341 (1966)] ↗

— William O. Douglas

#freedom #government #privacy #surveillance #age

That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#business

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#corruption #court-system #courts #ethical-behaviour #ethics