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What was a billionaire supposed to do? There was a limit to the effectiveness of charity, and paying more taxes just meant the government wasted your money on bureaucracy and cushy jobs for civil servants.

— Ben Aaronovitch False Value (2020)

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More quotes by Ben Aaronovitch

Like young men from the dawn of time, I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation.

Whispers Under Ground (2012)

Anyone who’s taken statements from multiple witnesses to the same event will know how malleable memory is.

Lies Sleeping (2018)

Nothing attracts the powerful quite like more power.

Lies Sleeping (2018)

There’s nothing like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.

The Hanging Tree (2016)

I wondered, not for the first time, whether all farmers become obsessed or if only obsessive people become farmers.

Tales from the Folly (2020)

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