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Governments can be democratic or not, more or less corrupt, but they will still pursue the same basic goals, and they will still be controlled by an elite. Government by its very nature concentrates power and excludes people from making decisions over their own lives.

— Peter Gelderloos The Failure of Nonviolence (2013)

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Government

More quotes by Peter Gelderloos

Governments are by their nature aggressive and dominating. No society is safe if its neighbor is a state.

The Failure of Nonviolence (2013)

The goal of our criticism should be solidarity, not homogeneity.

The Failure of Nonviolence (2013)

Freedom as a concept sides with those who are struggling for theirs, whereas nonviolence as a concept sides with the enforcers of normality and the rulers of the status quo.

The Failure of Nonviolence (2013)

The imperative of nonviolence overrides the basic respect of trusting people to liberate themselves.

How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)

The people most affected by a system of oppression should be at the forefront of the struggle against that particular oppression.

How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007)

All Peter Gelderloos quotes →

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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: Peter Gelderloos (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.