The One Where I Post Mark Twain Quotes About the Government (Bloggin' ain't easy, baby)

The government is not best which secures mere life and property -- there is a more valuable thing -- manhood.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.
-from A Tramp Abroad

...no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
- from The Gilded Age

The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.
- from Official Physic

Government is merely a servant – merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
- from The Bible According to Mark Twain

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
- from his Autobiography

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.
- from A Tramp Abroad

All large political doctrines are rich in difficult problems -- problems that are quite above the average citizen's reach. And that is not strange, since they are also above the reach of the ablest minds in the country; after all the fuss and all the talk, not one of those doctrines has been conclusively proven to be the right one and the best.
- from Who Is Mark Twain?