If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

The state in which the rulers are the most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed; and the state in which they are the most eager, the worst.

[M]oved by the profits to be derived from office and the handling of private property, men want to hold office continuously. It is as if the holders of office were sick men, who get the benefit of permanent health.

ARISTOTLE, Politics, III

Every workman, whether agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher, debates the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more quickly, more economically,--in a word, to do more with less. The opposite doctrine is in use with legislators, editors, statesmen, men whose business is to make experiments upon society.

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good?

[N]othing is madder than to build so many hopes on the State; that is to say, to assume a collective science and foresight, after having established individual folly and short-sightedness.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

The politicians always put forward the best possible intentions. They didn't intend to ruin the best health-care system in the world when they created Medicare, Medicaid, the HMO Act, the Kennedy-Kassenbaum Act, the Kennedy-Hatch Act and all their other grand health-care projects - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to dumb down education and make the schools unsafe when they intervened in local education - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to create gang warfare, police corruption and unsafe drugs with their insane War on Drugs - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to leave Panama defenseless against the drug cartels when they invaded Panama, kidnapped Manuel Noriega and destroyed the Panamanian army - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to make the world a more dangerous place when they sent your money to the Taliban, the Shah of Iran, and Saddam Hussein - as well as Syrian, Saudi and Indonesian dictators - but that's what happened. When politicians enact new laws, they don't say, "We're doing this to enrich our friends, punish our enemies and wreck some important part of American life" - but that's what inevitably happens. Politicians always claim the best of intentions. But when have they ever delivered anything but the worst results?

BROWNE, HARRY, Beware of Politicians with Good Intentions, May 16, 2002

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.

If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.

We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.

All people are not equally driven, but when it comes to the use of power, those who have excessive amounts of self-interest are apt to be the most influential - and most dangerous.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Put not your faith in Princes, Ira; since they don't produce, they always steal.

When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable "animated instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.

The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?

No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

Politics is a herd mentality. Politicians don’t really lead. Politicians reflect what they think is consensus opinion.

There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.

Under all systems of government, under Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy alike, it is a mere chance whether the individual called to the direction of public affairs will be qualified for the undertaking.

It is not at all easy to bring home to the men of the present day how low the credit of Republics had sunk before the establishment of the United States.

The lords of life, [Bentham] said, are pleasure and pain. Every man follows his own interest as he understands it, and the part of the community which has political power will use it for its own objects.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

I am strongly in favor of common sense, honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

All persons who devote themselves to forcing virtue on their fellow men deserve nothing better than kicks in the pants.

The state consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of 10 that promise is worth nothing. The 10th time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will be then run by . . . politicians.

Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.

This is the secret dream of those advocates...who are not afraid to exchange the ‘tyranny’ of a private employer for the terrible chains of a government’s control. They do not intend to be under government control; they would be exempt; the government would guarantee their income, collect it, deliver it, and ask no questions; they would achieve liberation from material concerns, by the only means it can ever be attempted: by the slave labor of others.

[T]his man-concocted system of forcibly controlling creative human action–interventionism, socialism, communism–presupposes all-knowing bureaucrats; but, to date, not a single one has been found.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.

What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them?

What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty.

The political parties which I style great are those which cling to principles more than to consequences; to general, and not to especial cases; to ideas, and not to men.

TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Democracy in America, Chapter X

The appetites of men, especially of Great Men, are carefully to be observed and stayed, or else they will never stay themselves. The experience of every age convinces us, that we must not judge of men by what they ought to do, but what they will do; and all history affords but few instances of men trusted with great power without abusing it, when with security they could.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.