Quotes & Sayings About Government

When we surrender moral government to the courts, we have surrendered the very essence of freedom, we have surrendered its only real meaning
and we will not be free again until we get it back. — Alan Keyes

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people. — Nelson Mandela

The capacity of the commonwealth government created under the local constitution to exercise governmental powers in local affairs is like that of local government in the states of the union in regard to non-federal affairs at the local level. — Dick Thornburgh

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more. — Thomas Sowell

This had been a bad section of town before the Circus moved in and brought in money, which attracted other businesses. The area had been gentrified not because of some government interference, but by good old-fashioned capitalism, which was one of Jean-Claude's favorite things. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The government shouldn't run anything, because it cannot run anything. — Lawrence Kudlow

I think the one thing that's going on here is that people are saying, uh-oh, the Chinese economy might be slowing more than we thought and the government is having a hard time stimulating it again. — David Wessel

Montanans elected me to the Senate to do away with shady backroom deals and to make government work better. — Jon Tester

female soldiers n.
males with female features

During the war in the Persian Gulf, the Saudi government rejected the idea of female soldiers coming to their defense (women make up one-tenth of the U.S. forces), so it designated the women soldiers "males with female features. — William D. Lutz

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. — James Madison

That wise Men have in all Ages thought Government necessary for the Good of Mankind; and, that wise Governments have always thought Religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being of Society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage and protect the Ministers of it, paying them the highest publick Honours, that their Doctrines might thereby meet with the greater Respect among the common People. — Benjamin Franklin

[F]reedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable. — Bill Maher

The crisis of democracy in the West is not the result of falling in love with another system. In Europe and America people who are disillusioned with democracy do not dream about the Chinese model or any other form of authoritarian rule. They do not dream about government that controls Internet and puts in prison those daring to disagree. — Ivan Krastev

Under the administration of George W. Bush, you will recall, federal spending grew pretty significantly. At the same time, the number of people directly employed by the federal government shrank. One of the factors that explained the difference was contracting. — Thomas Frank

Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular. — Jill Lepore

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism
ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power ... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

The question is what will Mitt Romney do as president if his policy is simply to be hands off and let the government be made so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. In the 21st century global economy, no state alone has the ability to compete against China. — Jennifer Granholm

Always love your country - but never trust your government! — Robert Novak

Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. — Henry Hazlitt

States are far less violent than traditional bands and tribes. Modern Western countries, even in their most war-torn centuries, suffered no more than around a quarter of the average death rate of nonstate societies, and less than a tenth of that for the most violent one. — Steven Pinker

Public unions are the country's foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government. — Jonah Goldberg

The risk from terrorism remains acute and the private market cannot continue to operate without a government backstop. — Michael Oxley

We don't have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. — Vince Vaughn

One of the great things about a free market is that it's inherently and indefatigably Darwinistic. Left to its own devices, a free market will eventually weed out the stupid from both 'ends' of the food chain otherwise described as supply and demand. As money is liberated from the hands of the stupid, those who would sell products or services to the stupid will eventually lose their share of the marketplace. Devoid of any 'benevolent' interference from government, the process is gloriously relentless, and cannot help but yield a successively smarter class of participants. — Edward Britton

The implication that women work for pin money and can manage on a worse pension, presumably by relying on husbands, riles. But even more galling for women is that few government ministers seem to even appreciate the value of the work they do. — Frances O'Grady

The question is whether voters, particularly independents, believe that Obama truly values personal liberty and responsibility as much as the government-bought safety net. — Ron Fournier

Liberals want the government to get bigger, and they want you to drive smaller cars, and they want to dictate the way you live. — Rush Limbaugh

The key decision for a statesman is whether to commit his nation or not. There is no middle course. Once a great nation commits itself, it must prevail. It will acquire no kudos for translating its inner doubts into hesitation. — Henry A. Kissinger

Pope smiled. "You're thinking all wrong, boy. There's no such thing as law or government inside this room. It's just you and me. I am the one and only authority in your little world, whose borders are these walls. I could kill you right now if I wanted to. — Blake Crouch

But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith. — Polly Toynbee

I don't think the government should be in the trailer-park business. I don't think they know how to run a trailer park. — Billy Graham

Unity is the only way in which the people of this country can overthrow the fascists, communists, capitalists, and all the other assholes who claim running a representative government is so difficult. The emphasis has been taken from the Bill of Rights and placed on the type of interpretation of the Constitution that best suits the people in power. — William Powell

Writing checks to the IRS that include strings of zeros does not bother me ... Overall, we feel extraordinarily lucky to have been dealt a hand in life that enables us to write large checks to the government rather than one requiring the government to regularly write checks to us-say, because we are disabled or unemployed. — Warren Buffett

We talked about many issues, like welfare, is it the way of life or hand up? Talked about size of government, how much should it tax families and small businesses? And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, 'I'll be damned. we're Republicans.' — Susana Martinez

A government that seizes control of the economy for the good of the people, ends up seizing control of the people for the good of the economy — Bob Dole

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei

As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state. — Adam Smith

I firmly believe this ... that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest. — Benjamin Franklin

Someone has to stay on the line and say, no, we can do this by cutting spending and reducing the size of government. That's what I was committed to doing. — Chris Christie

But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies, consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government? — Peter Kropotkin

The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult. — John Quincy Adams

You could adjust the punishment to fit the infraction. Even a small fine would be enough to bring an errant government to heel. — George Soros

You know, when companies who have made a commitment and have legacy costs and all of a sudden want to walk away from that commitment and lay it on the federal government, that's a problem. It's a fiscal problem for us. — Dennis Hastert

The question deserves to be asked: Is hating one's nation really such a bad thing? Or perhaps more importantly, after the crimes our government has committed, what moral self-respecting person can truly love this nation? — Michel Templet

In a republican land the power behind the throne is the power. — Maria Weston Chapman

Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation. — Vaclav Havel

I would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers. — Thomas Jefferson

We cannot, therefore, blame the courts, public schools, media, or government for our own theological unfaithfulness. We are the ones - the prophets and priests - who have contributed to this "Ichabod," this departure of God's glory in our time. Only by returning to sound, effective God-centered preaching and teaching can we restore the confidence not only of Christians themselves in God's greatness, but of an unbelieving world that is more apathetic toward our benign, helpless, happy deity than hostile. — Michael S. Horton

When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society is not yet ripe for representative government. — John Stuart Mill

An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized, as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power, and hostile to the principles of liberty. — Alexander Hamilton

Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I don't think it's any secret that the public has lost confidence in the state government, and there's a lot of work that needs to be done on issues related to public integrity. — Eric Schneiderman

Most men appear to think that the art of despotic government is statesmanship, and what men affirm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are not ashamed of practicing towards others; they demand just rule for themselves, but where other men are concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior is irrational; unless the one party is, and the other is not, born to serve, in which case men have a right to command, not indeed all their fellows, but only those who are intended to be subjects; just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food or sacrifice . — Aristotle.

I am delighted to be involved in the digital divide campaign to ensure that every school is made aware of what steps it can take to address the digital divide as it affects local children, and provide a range of opportunities for ICT suppliers, government agencies, charities and other organisations to make a contribution. — Estelle Morris, Baroness Morris Of Yardley

In social life, in the family government, in the Church, and in the State this is an acknowledged and invariable law. The debtor would be incapable of appreciating the clemency which cancelled the debt, so long as he denied either the existence or the justice of the claim. Unconscious of the obligation, he would be insensible to the grace that remitted it. — Octavius Winslow

It can have a secular purpose and have a relationship to God because God was presumed to be both over the state and the church, and separation of church and state was never meant to separate God from government. — Roy Moore

You cannot possibly expect even the most illiterate person on Earth to believe that you really want a democracy in Iraq while you are paying Mubarak $3 billion a year to pretend he doesn't hate Israel. And you're providing the military and diplomatic umbrella that protects the fascist government, if you will, of the al Sauds. — Michael Scheuer

Two weeks after the flight of the government from Naples, the French moved an army of six thousand soldiers into the city, and by late January a cabal of enlightened aristocrats and professors had engendered a monstrosity that called itself the Parthenopean or Vesuvian Republic. Most — Susan Sontag

In government you carry each hope; each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge. — Tony Blair

...the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. — Olaf Stapledon

I have proudly spent several periods in government, but I'm not a career politician. I come from a family of 'citizen soldiers.' — Jim Webb

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. — James Madison

But from the errors of other nations let us learn wisdom, and lay hold of the present opportunity - to begin government at the right end. — Thomas Paine

Bitcoin is getting there but it's not there yet. When it gets there, expect governments to panic and society to be reshaped into something where governments cannot rely on taxing income nor wealth for running their operations. — Rick Falkvinge

Government cannot be your parent. — Jesse Ventura

Like how the government of General Abacha was using its foreign policy to legitimize itself in the eyes of other African countries. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. — John Steinbeck

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt learned when he tried to pack the Supreme Court, the three branches of government are coequal for a reason. Neither the executive branch or the legislative branch should use the third branch to a pursue a partisan agenda. — Dan Pfeiffer

We [the U.S.] think nothing ... of attempting to inflict upon other peoples forms of government ill-tailored to their needs. — Ralph Peters

As I get older ... I become more convinced that good government is not a substitute for self-government. — Dwight Morrow

We need to take command of the solar system to gain that wealth, and to escape the sea of paper our government is becoming, and for some decent chance of stopping a Dinosaur Killer asteroid. — Larry Niven

'A sound Conservative government,' said Taper, musingly. 'I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.' — Benjamin Disraeli

Subversion can only be treason if government is legitimate. When a government has broken international law and its own internal laws it ceases to be legitimate. At that point a man of conscience and true patriotism is honor bound to take actions intended to restore legitimate government to his country. — G. Russell Overton

It is a maxim of wise government to treat people not as they should be but as they actually are. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. — Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson had rather serious concerns about the fate of the democratic experiment.28 He feared the rise of a new form of absolutism that was more ominous than the British rule overthrown in the American Revolution. He distinguished in his later years between what he called "aristocrats and democrats."29 And then he went on to say, "I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country."30 He also wrote, "I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."31 That's the kind of quote from a Founding Father you don't see too much. — Noam Chomsky

They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? — Anthony Burgess

The question nowadays is not what makes government work. The question is how do we make it stop. — P. J. O'Rourke

I tend to think having an impact on the world is a lot more complicated than government. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Highland Regiment in favour of Government, — Various

We, as citizens, are the true owners of government. — Todd Park

Republicans say they don't believe in government. Sure they do. They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends. — Elizabeth Warren

Is there any wonder why we are in such big trouble? Any question why the people don't trust their government anymore, and demand a change? — Chris Christie

Information technology alone cannot provide us an absolute shield against its evil twin disinformation technology. Our only protection is law, and that protection is available to us only if legitimate governments have the power to govern. — Paul Starr

Thieves, spies and other wise guys are working everywhere ... including in branches of the U.S. government. — Sherry Morris

I think the world looks down on Republicans for their socially conservative views, which includes religion in government. — Gary Johnson

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system. — Paul Broun

Allow me to sum it up this way; if the Church allows this secular humanistic "social gospel" into its hallowed halls, then it is putting its very existence at risk, for it will subject itself to the government. And the Church must be subject to Christ
not the government. — Curtis A. Chamberlain

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets. — Ronald Reagan

Many people believe that the free market, despite some admitted advantages, is a picture of disorder and chaos. Nothing is "planned," everything is haphazard. Government dictation, on the other hand, seems simple and orderly; decrees are handed down and they are obeyed. — Murray N. Rothbard

I think the answer has to do with the fact that [Louis D.] Brandeis was a consistent critic of bigness in business and in government. — Jeffrey Rosen

The modern Establishment relies on a mantra of 'There Is No Alternative': potential opposition is guarded against by enforcing disbelief in the idea that there is any other viable way of running society. — Owen Jones

If you think of global public goods like polio eradication, the kind of risk-taking new approach, philanthropy really does have a role to play there, because government doesn't do R&D about new things naturally as much as it probably should, and so philanthropy's there. — Bill Gates

To centralize power in the name of freedom is akin to putting a crime syndicate in charge of rooting out corruption. It is the normal state of politics that the more centralized it is, the more damage it does. Fast-track authority [for government-to-government trade agreements] centralizes power and is therefore part of the problem. — Llewellyn Rockwell

From elementary school through high school, my siblings and I were hectored to excel in every class, to win medals in science fairs, to be chosen princess of the prom, to win election to student government. Thereby and only thereby, we learned, could we expect to gain admission to the right college, which in turn would get us into Harvard Medical School: life's one sure path to meaningful success and lasting happiness. — Jon Krakauer

The object of my relationship with Vietnam has been to heal the wounds that exist, particularly among our veterans, and to move forward with a positive relationship, ... Apparently some in the Vietnamese government don't want to do that and that's their decision. — Ho Chi Minh

The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains. — Winston Churchill

I think the over-militarization of local police forces is also true of the over-militarization of the federal government, so I don't really run and hide from the comment that I think there are 48 federal agencies that have SWAT teams. — Rand Paul

War is when your government tells you who the enemy is. A revolution is when you figure it out yourself. — Anonymous

The Western governments will be encouraged and persuaded to deal with the real representatives and listen to the real voice of the Kurdish people. — Jalal Talabani