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"Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay."
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"The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative."

"What I want to do is create more taxpayers, not more taxes."

"I never knew a government yet that wanted to do anything."

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world."

"A world technology means either a world government or world suicide."

"Sometimes people need a kick in the pants to get them to do what they would be doing if government weren't there as a perpetual parent."

"The United States is not for democracy in Iraq, it's for setting up a puppet government."

"In 1995 the whole political situation was very complicated. I was the first deputy prime minister, and at the same time I had very low influence in the government."

"A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person."
Explore more quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth."

"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."

"We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,The path of its departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability!"

"In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect."

"I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity."

"Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."

"And in a mad tranceStrike with our spirit's knifeInvulnerable nothingsWe decayLike corpses in a charnelFear & GriefConvulse is & consume usDay by dayAnd cold hopes swarmLike worms withinOur living clay."

"I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity."

"How many a rustic Milton has passed by Stifling the speechless longings of his heart In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies no longer tameless then To mould a pin or fabricate a nail!"
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