Government Quotes

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

Ronald Reagan

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

John Adams

One of these days, the people are going to demand peace of the government, and the government is going to have to give it to them.

Dwight Eisenhowe

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Alexander Hamilton

And that this country shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government, of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

So they the Government go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all - Powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Will Rogers

Government, is the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.

MacKenzie King

Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not of men.

Gerald R. Ford, on becoming President, Aug. 9, 1974

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

George Washington

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Nadia Boulange

The art of government is the organization of idolatry.

George Bernard Shaw

No government can be long secure without formidable opposition.

Benjamin Disraeli

During these times, when crazy people are running the government, all you can do is laugh.

Bill McKenney, Speech to the Harvard Antimony Society, August 15, 2005

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

Aristotle, Politics

The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - The principle of civilian ascendency over the military.

William Orville Douglas

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

Bertrand Russell

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.

J. Michael Straczynski

The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

George Washington

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

Dwight D Eisenhowe

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, Journal, 1772

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.

Hubert Humphrey

An elephant is a mouse, built to government specifications.

John Herro

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

The process of creating new, democratic organs of government power is beginning, and, as never before, the greatest responsibility rests with the broadcast media.

Eduard Sagalaev

People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments.

Dwight D Eisenhowe

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.

Clement Atlee

I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.

George Bernard Shaw

Religion... is the basis and foundation of government... before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.

James Madison

If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - - And a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.

Edward Abbey

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

Edward Abbey

The Interstate Commerce commission, as its functions have now been limited by the courts is, or can be made, of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the public clamor for a government supervision of railroads, at the same time that that supervision is almost entirely nominal.

Richard Olney, a lawyer for the Boston & Maine and Attorney General under Grover Cleveland, advising a railroad president

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

Harry S Truman, August 8, 1950

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

Thomas Jefferson