The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

[T]he seven principles that apply to all government programs — not just the ones you oppose.

1 . Government is force...

2. Government is politics...

3. You don't control government...

4. Every government program will be more expensive and more expansive than anything you had in mind when you proposed it...

5. Power will always be misused...

6. Government doesn't work...

7. Government must be subject to absolute limits...

BROWN, HARRY, The 7 Never-to-be-Forgotten Principles of Government (2003)

Government is politics. Whenever you turn over to the government a financial, social, medical, military, or commercial matter, it's automatically transformed into a political issue — to be decided by those with the most political influence. And that will never be you or I...Your ideal law will be written by politicians for political purposes, administered by bureaucrats for political purposes, and adjudicated by judges appointed for political purposes. So don't be surprised if the new law turns out to do exactly the opposite of what you thought you were supporting.

If you think there's a successful government program, you probably don't know how much it actually costs, aren't aware of all its destructive side-effects, have no idea how easily and inexpensively such a thing could be done outside of government, and/or are basing your view of its success on political propaganda.

Nearly all governmental actions deprive some individuals of legal rights they had previously possessed, and nearly all political groups seek some kind of governmental action that will deprive some individuals of certain legal rights.

DAHL, ROBERT, A Preface to Democratic Theory, 1956, quoted in DIZERGA, GUS, Persuasion, Power and Polity, A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization, Chapter Four

Society, and with it the race, cannot survive unless it restrains to some extent individual freedom of action, nor can any particular society long survive if it carry that restraint too far. It should, therefore, ascertain and maintain the line, the equilibrium, between necessary freedom and necessary restraint.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter IV, Justice the Equilibrium

The government that cannot or will not maintain order and peace, prevent violence and fraud, enforce individual rights and redress individual wrongs completely and promptly, is so far a failure and whatever its form should be reformed or overthrown. Even military despotism is better than disorder.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter V, Best Form of Government

Under all governments there has been more or less friction between the persons governing and those governed.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter V, Best Form of Government

Every actual state is corrupt.

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.

Love your country, but never trust its government.

You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government.

The proposals of other systems are that these marginal abuses of Liberty from the right - which is business - are to be replaced by major abuses of Liberty from the left - which is Bureaucracy and Tyranny. If the government has not the capacity, through regulation, to accomplish the easier task of an umpire, surely it cannot direct or run the system itself.

In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.

I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government, and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking, and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right of personal freedom.

Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master.

The purpose of government is not to promote its own functions. When government spends tax money to produce ads that promote its own largess, then government itself has become an interest group. This is anathema to the ideals of a democratic society.

The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

A government, at bottom, is nothing more than a gang of men and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men...Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one and even those governments that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. Indeed, it would not be far from wrong to describe the best government as the common enemy of all decent citizens.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

If the government of a free country forces every citizen to cooperate fully in its designs to repel the aggressors and every able-bodied man to join the armed forces, it does not impose upon the individual a duty that would step beyond the taxes the praxeolgoical law dictates. In a world full of unswerving aggressors and enslavers, integral unconditional pacifism is tantamount to unconditional surrender to the most ruthless oppressors. He who wants to remain free, must fight unto death those who are intent upon depriving him of freedom...He who in our age opposes armaments and conscription is, perhaps unbeknown to himself, an abetter of those aiming at the enslavement of all.

Princes, governors, and generals are never spontaneously liberal. They become liberal only when forced to by the citizens.

The state? What is that? Well then! Now open your ears, for now I shall speak to you of the death of peoples. The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: ' I, the state, am the people.' It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. It is destroyers who set snares for many and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred desires over them. The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies - and whatever it has, it has stolen. Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. Even its belly is false.

If the problem with government is that it is run by people and not, as James Madison put it, angels, the problem with big government is that it is run by a lot of people who are not angels. They can, together and in the aggregate, do much mischief. They can and inevitably will produce a great deal of injustice, corruption and heartlessness.

NOONAN, PEGGY, The Steamroller, Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2006

The problem with government is that it is run by people, and people are flawed. They are not virtue machines. We are all of us, even the best of us, vulnerable to the call of the low: to greed, conceit, insensitivity, ruthlessness, the desire to show you're in control, in charge, in command.

NOONAN, PEGGY, The Steamroller, Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2006

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

When it’s better for enthusiastic and ambitious professionals to go to work for a country’s government than it is for them to go to work, the country is in trouble.

O’ROURKE, P.J., Parliament of Whores

Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have. Government contains impure ingredients - as anyone who's ever looked at Congress can tell you. Government practices deceptive advertising. The merest glance at the federal budget is enough to convict the government of perjury, extortion and fraud. Government should be against the law. Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.

Examples are not wanting show how dreadfully vindictive and cruel are old governments, when they are successful against what they call a revolt.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

The governors never ask, "What business are we in?" What are we supposed to be delivering? Liberty, order, and justice? Or any good, service, or restriction that sounds attractive and has an effective lobby?

[A] settled government is far more dangerous: a mob is by its nature transitory and short-levied, while ‘despotism wearing the form of government and being armed with its force, is an evil not to be conquered without dreadful consequences...’

To be governed is to be at every move, at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, choked, imprisoned, shot, machine-gunned, judged, condemned, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

[G]overnment’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

Government has an important role in helping develop a country's economic foundation. But the critical test is whether government is genuinely working to liberate individuals by creating incentives to work, save, invest, and succeed.

[L]iberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production..[a]nd power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence: the state.

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.

The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens to give to the other.