#states

Unlike despotisms, modern democracies are not supposed promiscuously to accumulate property and then charge their taxpayers to maintain it. But that is what they do. Governments are always trying to extend their responsibilities and their estates, and it is very hard for parliaments to reign them in. ↗

— James Buchan

#always #charge #democracies #estates #extend

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#disposition #improve #preserve #standard #statesman

Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit. ↗

— Ruth Benedict

#japan #materialism #spirit #united-states #victory

It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts from the puerile to the senile. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fairies #hero-worship #john-f-kennedy #kennedy-family #politics

As Lynn writes: "What angers me is the loss of control. At any moment someone could come to me, be dressed the right way and use the right code, and I no longer have free will. I will do anything that person requests. I hate them for that. Nothing else is as bad as knowi that I am always out of control; knowing that I am still a laboratory experiment, a puppet whose strings are hidden from ever but my handlers, and I don't yet know how to break free. p216

— Lynn Hersha

#control #free-will #government-abuse #manipulation #military

We want to obviously foster a relationship that we're a partner with states; that we all share the same goals of closing the achievement gap, just as the Congress does; and that we're practical and sophisticated enough to understand what they're talking about. ↗

— Margaret Spellings

#achievement #closing #congress #does #enough

All the technology of our production was still pre-War. They were sort of '38, '39 and the War had been stable and so we were infinitely behind whatever had been going on in the United States for instance. ↗

— Gianni Agnelli

#behind #going #had #infinitely #instance

When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#inspiration #liberty #political-philosophy #strength #tyranny

I'm Jim Phillips, I have multiple personalities. I'm also a skindiver, a puppeteer, and I was the tenth president of the United States. ↗

— Ryan Stiles

#i #jim #multiple #personalities #phillips

[Obamacare] was almost the perfect example of politics in the Bubble Era, where the time horizon for anyone with real power is always close to zero, long-term thinking is an alien concept, and even the most massive and ambitious undertakings are motivated entirely by short-term rewards. A radical reshaping of the entire economy, for two election cycles’ worth of campaign cash – that was what this bill meant. It sounds absurdly reductive to say so, but there’s no other explanation that makes any sense. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#health-care #obamacare #united-states #motivational