#government

I collect collectivisms. I’ve already got socialism and communism, and all I need is fascism to complete the set. I’m looking to trade my dusty democracy, but Uncle Sam isn’t interested in a deal at this time. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#collections #collectivism #communism #democracy #fascism

I have an idea about voting, how about on every ballot we include "None of the above". People may laugh at that, but what that is, it is a vote of no confidence in your government and I'm willing to bet that in some elections, 'None of the Above' would win. Imagine if you won the election but lost to 'None of the Above'. Wouldn't that make you re-think your positions? ↗

— Jesse Ventura

#voting #imagination

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. ↗

— Daniel Webster

#government #design

Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It's a way of silencing critics and evading responsibility - for incompetence or worse. It generates an elite, a band of brothers in whom the national confidence can be reliably vested, unlike the great mass of citizenry on whose behalf the information is presumably made secret in the first place. With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#rationality #science #skepticism #intelligence

A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them. ↗

— M.D. Arnold

#leadership #leadership

When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure. ↗

— Alexander Hamilton

#government-leadership #courage

Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck." [On Water] ↗

— Guy de Maupassant

#government #leadership #peace #responsibility #shipwreck

Diplomats and bureaucrats may function differently, but they achieve exactly the same results. ↗

— Spock

#government-corruption #organizational-leadership #leadership

The challenge has always been that "good people" don't know how to win elections ↗

— Fela Durotoye

#government #leadership #politics #leadership

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#government #wisodm #love