Government Quotes

How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

I'm a married gay man, so you might think that I appreciate the government forcing a Christian baker or photographer or florist to act against their religion in order to cater, photograph, or decorate my wedding. But you'd be wrong. A government that can force Christians to violate their conscience can force me to violate mine.

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.

The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.

Socialism means slavery.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

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

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.

Government is essentially immoral.

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

The world is not going to be saved by legislation.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

I have long believed taxpayers make better use of their money than the government ever could.

If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con' what is the opposite of 'progress'?

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

Governments are composed of human beings, and all of the frailties that humans possess are absorbed into these governments and become active within these governments. Hatred, anger, jealousy, fear, greed, distrust and the whole host of afflictions that humans must bear, lurk just beneath the surface of civility displayed by 'government.'

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

This used to be a government of checks and balances. Now it's all checks and no balances.

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.

Under the new government of the Constitution, beginning in 1789, all of the peacetime measures were repeated: chaplains, prayers, memorials of Thanksgiving, the Northwest Ordinance, funding for the Christian education of Indians.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

You don't pay taxes - they take taxes.

The difference in golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie.

Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.

Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.

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

Are we still a country that takes risks, that innovates, that believes anything is possible? Or are we a country that is resigned to whatever liberty the government decides to dish out?

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.

Corruption is the enemy of development, and of good governance. It must be got rid of. Both the government and the people at large must come together to achieve this national objective.

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish - too much handling will spoil it.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.