Government Quotes
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.George Bernard Shaw
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.Thomas Jefferson
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
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.Francis Bacon
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
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
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.Gilbert Keith Chesterton
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva
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
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
It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.Alexander Hamilton, Speech on 21 June 1788 urging ratification of the Constitution in New York.
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
A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children.Lyndon B. Johnson
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.Thomas Jefferson
All governments eventually lean further and further towards aristocracy.Frank Herbert, Dune
Of all the inventions that have helped to unify China perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another or from the officials at the seat of government.Madame Chiang
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.H. L. Mencken
The one bonus of not lifting the ban on gays in the military is that the next time the government mandates a draft, we can all declare we are homosexual instead of running off to Canada.Lorne Bloch
Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed.I. F. Stone 1907 - 1989
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
The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.Thomas Paine, in his "The Rights of Man" (1791)
The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.Voltaire
A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.Benjamin Disraeli, Speech in the House of Commons, Mar. 3, 1845
That government is best which governs least. - From Civil Disobedience.Henry David Thoreau
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.Edward Abbey
The less government we have the better.Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Government never furthered any enterprise but the alacrity with which it got out of the way.Henry David Thoreau
We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace. We know that oppressive governments support terror, while free governments fight the terrorists in their midst. We know that free peoples embrace progress and life, instead of becoming the recruits for murderous ideologies.George W. Bush, Speech to UN General Assembly, September 21, 2004
The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered... deeply... finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.George Washington
The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend? The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, 1860
All government - - Indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - - Is founded on compromise and barter.Edmund Burke, Speech on the Conciliation of America
Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.Lenny Bruce
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.Sir Winston Churchill
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.Lord William Beveridge
A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.James Reston
Why has government been instituted at all Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.Alexander Hamilton
