Quotes by American Authors - Page 92

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
James Madison
You know that when ex-military personnel start assassinating their own government's agents that something funky is going on.
Steven Magee
I sincerely hope that President Barack Obama’s government will be remembered as the peak of deregulated corporate corruption and not the ongoing rise of it.
Steven Magee
Government scientists are commonly as corrupt as the corporate government that employs them.
Steven Magee
It is clear that the protective functions of workplace health and safety have transferred to the workers through the process of corporate government deregulation and reduced funding of relevant government departments.
Steven Magee
When the government and electrical utility company jointly harass an electrical fraud researcher, it confirms that the research is progressing in the right direction!
Steven Magee
I realized that the legal system was corrupt when I went to court and the judge imposed a very short time limit on my evidence submission before removing my legal rights to free speech.
Steven Magee
Whether voting Republican or Democrat, the result is the same: A corrupt corporate government.
Steven Magee
The American government is premised on the theory that if the individual man is to be free, his ideas, his beliefs, his ideology, his philosophy, must be placed beyond the reach of government.
William O. Douglas
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...
Thomas Jefferson
When avarice takes the lead in a state, it is commonly the forerunner of its fall.
Alexander Hamilton
Individualists and collectivists both have been wronged by the government, and we all maintain (consciously or subconsciously) a list of the ways our lives have been diminished by its bureaucracies and actions. One of the differences between the collectivists and the individualists is that those wrongs are front and center for the individualists, whereas the collectivists are blind to those wrongs, or they excuse those wrongs, or they forgive those wrongs. "Use us," the collectivists say, while they throw not only themselves into the bottomless pit that is the Administrative State, but everybody else too.
Mike Klepper
The general public has failed to realize that the USA government has built a High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in most cities with the mass deployment of smart radio frequency transmitting utility meters.
Steven Magee
Just as the attempts to preserve the power of knights in armor were doomed to fail in the face of gunpowder weapons, so the modern notions of nationalism and citizenship are doomed to be short-circuited by microtechnology. Indeed, they will eventually become comic in much the way that the sixteenth century. The cherished civic notions of the twentieth century will be comic anachronisms to new generations after the transformation of the year 2000. The Don Quixote of the twenty-first century will not be a knight-errant struggling to revive the glories of feudalism but a bureaucrat in a brown suit, a tax collector yearning for a citizen to audit.
James Dale Davidson
...it...planted seeds of doubt as to whether we think diabolically enough when we wonder what our government is doing behind our backs.
Alexandra Zapruder
The USA has turned into a great country to study corporate government corruption.
Steven Magee
I dread having to call the police, as I have no idea if they will send good cop, bad cop, lying cop, incompetent cop, aggressive cop, assaulting cop, corrupt cop, or the worst one of them all, the terminator cop.
Steven Magee
An Indian Affairs agent said, 'The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?
David Grann
Capitalism is a social system where the health and security of a nation are compromised for corporate gain.
Suzy Kassem
Susan Margaret Collins was born on December 7, 1952 in Caribou, Maine and is presently the senior United States Senator from Maine. Senator Collins has served in the Senate since 1997 and chaired the Senate Committee on Homeland Security from 2003 to 2007. She now is the Chairwoman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. Collins is a graduate of St. Lawrence University, a liberal arts college, in Canton, New York. Considered a moderate Republican, she became the only Republican in the U.S. Senate currently representing a state in New England. Her vote was one of three republican votes in the Senate that helped to defeat a bill designed to destroy the Affordable Health Care Program presently in effect. John McCain's heroic stand only mattered because Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski bravely stood by him! It was their courage that saved health care for approximately 22 million people.
Captain Hank Bracker
Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers.
James Q. Wilson
The President and the Congress are all very well in their way. They can say what they think they think, but it rests with the Supreme Court to decide what they have really thought.
Theodore Roosevelt
When a plutocracy is disguised as a democracy, the system is beyond corrupt.
Suzy Kassem
[T]here are some human rights that are so deep that we can't negotiate them away. I mean people do heinous, terrible things. But there are basic human rights I believe that every human being has. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations says it for me. And it says there are two basic rights that can't be negotiated that government doesn't give for good behavior and doesn't take away for bad behavior. And it's the right not to be tortured and not to be killed. Because the flip side of this is that then when you say OK we're gonna turn over -- they truly have done heinous things, so now we will turn over to the government now the right to take their life. It involves other people in doing essentially the same kind of
Helen Prejean
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.
Abraham Lincoln
Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Abraham Lincoln
I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyone who falls for Camelot.
Christopher Hitchens
Affronts to her reputation pierced her to the heart, though I couldn’t understand why, since she had very little character left to defend.
Melika Dannese Lux
What do you believe reveals more about a man’s character, his arrogance or his attempt to disguise it?
Aaron B. Powell
I was beginning to think that Simon just had a bad case of OCD, ADD, and PMS. With a little BS and OMG mixed in.
Dannika Dark
Like your marriage, everything in the universe is trying to find its orbit. In the midst of this constant readjustment, both partners should be able to go to bed knowing that neither one is going to abandon a wounded, or struggling marriage. There is a comforting reassurance being with someone who keeps their promise.pg iv
Michael Ben Zehabe
If one abandons their principles when tested by struggle, they were never true principles but advertisements for character they never possessed.
Tiffany Madison
Once Addie let someone in, she was impossible to forget. There was something about her that crawled inside a person and built a nice comfy home there, her goodness expanding until it filled every limb.
Kasie West
You can’t be a successful leader or mentor until you have served. You can’t serve until you have stepped out of your comfort zone. And you can’t step out of your comfort zone unless you have character and keep your word.
Bill Courtney
The true test of character is to live win-win even when promoted to positions where win-lose is possible.
Orrin Woodward
You speak of the good conduct of your ancestors. As your own conduct is under discussion, and not theirs, I cannot see how their former good character can at all serve your present purpose. Fortunately for our country, every man stands upon his own merit.
Stephen Decatur
The character to follow thru on commitments made to others is built by following thru on commitments made to self.
Orrin Woodward
One of the Christian's biggest fears is appearing 'too Christian'. God forbid, because that's often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being 'one of them'.
Criss Jami
The good polis is made by the good person, his moral character intact, and the good polis, in turn, helps turn out good persons, their moral character intact.
Rebecca Goldstein
Some women don't care what you can do for them. They care about what you could make of them in the inside.
Shannon L. Alder
After all, hadn't she been the one to pursue him? And Madame Dupuy had done it with a vigor that most women would have been too ashamed to display.
Rose Wynters
It is neither trials nor relationships nor successes nor failures that define a man, but the choices he makes while handling them.
Richelle E. Goodrich
If you put yourself in the emotion that you want from others, you are more likely to receive it.
Shannon L. Alder
I had to have him, had to. Just the way I had to have everything I wanted; or had to do everything I'd ever wanted to do.
Anne Rice
Your words may be heard but your attitude will be felt. Your attitude reveals your character so never try to deceive anyone with mere words. Word/Talk is cheap but character is key. It costs nothing to be authentic. Learn to be a man or woman of substance!
Kemi Sogunle
We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trials , or fractured by a permanent, damming fault line.
Karen Marie Moning
Now the second common characteristic of fiction follows from this, and it is that fiction is presented in such a way that the reader has the sense that it is unfolding around him. This doesn't mean he has to identify himself with the character or feel compassion for the character or anything like that. It just means that fiction has to be largely presented rather than reported. Another way to say it is that though fiction is a narrative art, it relies heavily on the element of drama.
Flannery O'Connor
His character is like an emerald—multifaceted and enhanced by inclusions.
Melika Dannese Lux
If something bad smells in the basement, it will eventually make its way to the attic.
Anthony Liccione
I say, "Well then I don't know if it was real, and that makes me feel like I'm going insane again.""Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy and then a desperate desire for the cave. He will get lonely there eventually and come back.""To me?"He doesn't pause. "To someone new.""And I'll have to watch another girl?""You will have to, but you will also know what lies ahead for that poor girl.
Emma Forrest
Deana Carter sings about it. Lady Antebellum sings about it. Eric Church. Gosh, not just country artists. Katy Perry. Everybody has a song about it because everybody's been through it. You find that person at eighteen and you lose yourself. And the tragedy is, it's the person who's completely opposed to everything you've ever wanted. You bond with that person, and that person breaks your heart. I'm that tragedy for you, and you're mine.
Jennifer Echols
And you left your mark on me...With the destruction of us, finally, we became no one.
Nadège Richards
It's a certain tragedy when agony and resentment are all you have left connecting you to someone you once loved.
J.S.B. Morse
I'm dumping the whole box back into your life Ed, every item of you and me. I'm dumping this box on your porch, Ed, but it's you, Ed, who is getting dumped.
Daniel Handler
When true love broke my heart in half,I took the whiskey from the shelf,And told my neighbors when to laugh.I keep a dog, and bark myself.
Theodore Roethke
(Divorce)We’ll remarry someday when we’ve grown, Like royalty who’ve earned the throne. An aisle made of gold, To have and to hold.My dress made of rags, A suit that’s so torn.All eyes are on me,But mine only on you. You give your hand,A king to his queen,But know this darling,Mulligans aren’t for the weak. By changing the rules,We’re changing the war,The wounds that we’ve known,Battle stains on the floor.But from this day on,The same as before, You are the apple,My eyes still adore.Worth more than one shot,Though we’ll face the worst a lot,Better days will come,If we stay and don’t run.And if a wave takes us out,I know we’ll figure it out. And if the current takes us in, I know we’ll do it all again.
Crystal Woods
The only way I survive is to never stop moving. I make sure I'm always surrounded by others, so I won't have time to think and end up imploding like a dying star.
Amy Plum
To him, freedom was greater than love. She hated that. tBecause she had always thought that love was freedom.
Tessa Shaffer
Having rebound sex to cure a heartbreak is like drinking alcohol to cure a hangover.
Khang Kijarro Nguyen
I'm a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I'm like every single miserable moron I've scorned, and pretended I didn't recognize. I'm all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I'm not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing.
Daniel Handler