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To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

— Andrew Marvell The Character of Holland (1653)

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Government

More quotes by Andrew Marvell

For though the whole world cannot show such another,
Yet we’d better by far have him than his brother.

The world in all doth but two nations bear —
The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere.

An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.

No creature loves an empty space;
Their bodies measure out their place.

Where the remote Bermudas ride,
In th' ocean's bosom unespied.

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Andrew Marvell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.