#over

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it. ↗

— Mark Twain

#government #democracy

There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#government #oligarchy #plutocracy #democracy

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#democracy #elections #government #greed #wall-street

Fool! The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, ‘here or nowhere,’ couldst thou only see! ↗

— Thomas Carlyle

#motivational #wake-up-call #art

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#literature #self-discovery #path

There is no Them. There are only facets of Us. ↗

— John Green

#poverty #them #us #man

Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it. ↗

— Yves Saint Laurent

#i #i have learned #important #learned #over

Anarchy is a state of society where the only government is reason. ↗

— Michael Schwab

#government #reason #anarchism

If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law. ↗

— Lysander Spooner

#authorize #government #judge #jury #justice

I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. ↗

— Benjamin Franklin

#government #observation