Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.

Nothing is more dangerous to good government than great power in improper hands.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. Indeed, it would not be far wrong to describe the best as the common enemy of all decent citizens. But there will be small hope of gaining adherents to this idea so long as government is thought of as an independent and somehow super-human organism, with powers, rights, and privileges transcending those of any other human aggregation.

I think the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.

[W]hatever is unnecessary in government is pernicious.

Government is the most dangerous institution known to man. Throughout history it has violated the rights of men more than any individual or group of individuals could do: it has killed people, enslaved them, sent them to forced labor and concentration camps, and regularly robbed and pillaged them of the fruits of their expended labor. Unlike individual criminals, government has the power to arrest and try; unlike individual criminals, it can surround and encompass a person totally, dominating every aspect of one's life, so that one has no recourse from it but to leave the country (and in totalitarian nations even that is prohibited).

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

A government is never more dangerous than when embarking on a self-defeating or downright suicidal course.

Government succeeds by failing: the more incompetence, the greater the potential reward in the arena of the public sector.

While it is relatively easy to see that government is a bully, a thief, and a killer, the most baneful effect of government has always been psychological. Government convinced man that it was an absolute necessity for human survival. ‘No matter how bad a government may be, it is better than no government.’ No other church had a more convincing argument.

The most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways.