Government Quotes
Most popular government quotes
I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
As the word "liberal" is, in its classical meaning, the opposite of authoritarian, it is more accurate, therefore, to characterize the Modern Liberal as a Statist. ... The primary principle around which the Statist organizes can be summed up in a single word—equality.
The reason stimulus plans of this sort do not work is a fundamental reality of governance: The government does not add value to the economy. It removes value from the economy by imposing taxes on one citizen and providing cash to another.
Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Good government is no substitute for self-government.
The State is made for man, not man for the State.
Government is not mere advice; it is authority, with power to enforce its laws.
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a handy servant and a dangerous master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
The less government we have, the better — the fewer laws, and the less confided power.
No government can long be secure without a formidable opposition.
No man is good enough to govern another without the other's consent.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. When ever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.
Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?
There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual; the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.
If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon the court, or the judges. It is a duty, from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs, if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
![In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the President] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as Congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a Congress? - Abraham Lincoln quote.](/img/q/70/11770A-in-a-certain-sense-and-to-certain-extent-he-president-abraham-lincoln.png)
In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the President] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as Congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a Congress?
![I do not deny the possibility that the people may err in an election; but if they do, the true [cure] is in the next election, and not in the treachery of the person elected. - Abraham Lincoln quote.](/img/q/71/11771A-i-do-not-deny-the-possibility-that-people-may-err-abraham-lincoln.png)
I do not deny the possibility that the people may err in an election; but if they do, the true [cure] is in the next election, and not in the treachery of the person elected.
We don't have to expect everything from those who govern us; that would be juvenile.
![People are historical subjects, which is to say, citizens and members of the pueblo [nation]. The state and society should generate the social conditions that promote and act as guardian of their rights and allow them to be builders of their own destiny. - Pope Francis quote.](/img/q/00/12500A-people-are-historical-subjects-which-is-say-citizens-members-pueblo-pope-francis.png)
People are historical subjects, which is to say, citizens and members of the pueblo [nation]. The state and society should generate the social conditions that promote and act as guardian of their rights and allow them to be builders of their own destiny.
The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.
The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government power.
It is a seldom proferred argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as to what the government is doing.
A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.
Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.
Government can't give us anything without depriving us of something else.
Everybody wants to eat at the government's table, but nobody wants to do the dishes.
When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.
The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them.
A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.
Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
A government is the only vessel known to leak from the top.
Knowing exactly how much of the future can be introduced into the present is the secret of a great government.
It's every American's duty to support his government, but not necessarily in the style to which it has become accustomed.
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
We should know everything we can about government — and the first thing we should know is what we're paying for it.
Government investigations have always contributed more to our amusement than they have to our knowledge.
I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
It's a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it.
It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.
It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the substitute is light taxes.
We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home and the most to institutionalize him.
There can be no truer principle than this— that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
Fear and hope are the two great instruments for the governance of men.
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
Every country has the government it deserves.
If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
All government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses.
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
The only good government... Is a bad one in a hell of a fright.
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.
The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Congress is functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended-not very well. They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
The great art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs.
Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
Some of us are like a shovel brigade that follow a parade down Main Street cleaning up.
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
There are two periods when Congress does no business. One is before the holidays, and the other after.
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
Our government sprang from and was made for the people — not the people for the government. To them it owes an allegiance from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom.
Britain has invented a new missile. It's called the civil servant – it doesn't work and it can't be fired.
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.
The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
I learned in business that you had to be very careful when you told somebody that's working for you to do something, because the chances were very high he'd do it. In government, you don't have to worry about that.
Nature, our father and mother, gave us all we have got. The state, our elder brother, swipes the lot.
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be a system of a regular government.
Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others—only to lose it over themselves.
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
There are two great antagonistic principles at the root of all government—stability and experiment.
The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.
Personally, I think government is a tool, like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build with or you can use a hammer to destroy with. There is nothing intrinsically good or evil about the hammer itself. It is the purposes to which it is put and the skill with which it is used that determine whether the hammer's work is good or bad.
The essence of government is power, and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a healthy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
It will take some time to accomplish the things I have described. Government is an ocean liner, not a speedboat.
Governments are the only vessels that leak from the top.
Government, in the Conservative view, is something like fire. Under control, it is the most useful of servants; out of control, it is a ravaging tyrant.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
Governments need both shepherds and butchers.
Government expands to absorb revenue, and then some.
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.
I have seen it happen more often than not in government that when one asks for a choice, one is always given three: two absurd ones and the preferred one. And the experienced bureaucrat can usually tell the preferred one because it is almost always the one typed in the middle.
An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge ... is itself a frightful despotism.
It is simply, and solely, the abundance of money within a state that makes the difference in its grandeur and power.
One of the principal functions of government during the past two centuries has been to make economic crimes against people and planet legal.
A sign of development is the lack of prestige for government positions.
