A Quote by Robert Taft

Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.

Robert Taft

Quote Topics

Any Criticism Democratic Democratic Government Essential Government Kind Maintenance Time War

Quote Author

Robert Taft
American - Politician
September 8, 1889 - July 31, 1953

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.

H. L. Mencken

Government acquisition of food supplies in time of war is no less important than conscription. Equity is the fundamental principle applicable to both these essential phases of war administration.

Chiang Kai-shek

Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The men in Vietnam weren't allowed to fight the war with any kind of concern to win by the government. It was like a war of attrition.

Sylvester Stallone

America is at war with itself because it's basically declared war not only on any sense of democratic idealism, but it's declared war on all the institutions that make democracy possible. And we see it with the war on public schools. We see it with the war on education. We see it with the war on the healthcare system.

Henry Giroux

To take an analogy: if we say that a democratic government is the best kind of government, we mean that it most completely fulfills the highest function of a government - the realisation of the will of the people.

John Drinkwater

To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them.

Michael Parenti

Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy. I think what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn’t get affected by election choices and that isn’t in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own.

Glenn Greenwald

Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society.

Jimmy Carter

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. Pentagon official, on why US military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War In time of war the first casualty is truth.

Boake Carter

The discussion about food doesn't make any sense without discussion at the same time of land, land use, land policy, fertility maintenance, and farm infrastructure maintenance.

Wendell Berry

The logic of all this seems to be that it is all right for young people in a democracy to learn about any civilization or social theory that is not dangerous, but that they should remain entirely ignorant of any civilization or social theory that might be dangerous on the ground that what you don't know can't hurt you ... a complete denial of the democratic principle that the general diffusion of knowledge and learning through the community is essential to the preservation of free government.

Carl L. Becker

For us, the government of Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro is not a government that allows democratic plurality. It does not allow for there to be a real opposition, and that is not democratic.

Nayib Bukele

A democratic and stable Iraq and Afghanistan are essential to our broader efforts to make no place safe for terrorists and to win the War on Terrorism.

Ben Nelson

I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.