Government Quotes
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.Henry Commage
Universal suffrage is the government of a house by its nursery.Prince Otto
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.Louis D. Brandeis
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.Francis Bacon
The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - The principle of civilian ascendency over the military.William Orville Douglas
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.H. L. Mencken
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.Benjamin Disraeli
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.John Quincy Adams
The government is us we are the government, you and I.Theodore Roosevelt
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Many people consider the things which government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism.Chief Justice Earl Warren
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.William Ellery Channing
I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.John Updike
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
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.Harry S Truman
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.Ronald Reagan
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.Milton Friedman
The real object of those who resorted to Secession, as well as those who sustained it, was not to overthrow the Government of the United States but to perpetuate the principles upon which it was founded. The object in quitting the Union was not to destroy, but to save the principles of the Constitution.Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Every culture has its distinctive and normal system of government. Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism, moderated by assassination.Unknown Russian
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
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens to give to the other.Voltaire, The Portable Voltaire
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.Abraham Lincoln
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.I. F. Stone
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.James Madison
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can excercise their constitutional right of amending it, or excercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.Abraham Lincoln
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil in its worst state, an intolerable one.Thomas Paine
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
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.Thomas Jefferson
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.Bertrand de Jouvenal
Government cannot make us equal it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.Clarence Thomas
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
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.Barry Goldwate
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
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
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.Frederick Bastiat, "Government" published in 1848
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.Thomas Jefferson
We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it.George Farquha
