There is nothing new inThird World governments seeking to justifyand perpetuate authoritarian rule by denouncing liberal democratic principles as alien.

-Aung San Suu Kyi
  Freedom From Fear,'In Quest of Democracy'.

   Never under the most despotic of infidel Governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specificöthe never-failing nostrum of all state physicians from the days of Draco to the present time; death. Is there not blood enough upon your penal code that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you?

-Rochdale
  Maiden speech, House of Lords, 27 Feb, against a proposal to introduce the death penalty for machine- wrecking.

Experience and history teach†that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

-Heffer, Simon
  Lectures on the Philosophy of  World History, introduction.

For Kings and Governments may err But never Mr Baedeker.

-Herbert, SirA(lan) P(atrick)
  'Mr Baedeker, or Britons  Abroad'.

The main business of socialist parties is not to form governments but to change minds.

-King, Carlyle
Attributed,1940s.

There is something that Governments care for far more than human life, and that is the security of property. So it is through property that we shall strike the enemy† Be militant each in your own way† I incite this meeting to rebellion.

-Pankhurst, Emmeline ne¤  e  Goulden
  Speech, Royal Albert Hall,17 Oct.

All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire.

-Pareto,Vilfredo
Quoted in Arthur Livingstone (ed) The Mind and Society (1935).

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.

Il faut, dans le gouvernement, des bergers et des bouchers. Governments need both shepherds and butchers.

-Voltaire pseudonym of  Fran c° ois Marie Arouet
InVoltaire's Notebooks, edited by Th. Besterman (1952).

'The Beast stands for strong mutually antagonistic governments everywhere,' he said.'Self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad.'

-Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn
  Scoop, bk.1, ch.1.