Government Quotes
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
The most valuable function performed by the federal government is entertainment.Dave Barry
A democratic government is only as strong as the alert conscience of its people.Charles W. Tobey
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
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
The 1976 Bicentennial is not going to be invented in Washington, printed in triplicate by the Government Printing Office and mailed to you by the United States Postal Service.Richard Milhous Nixon
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, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781 - 82
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have right that these wants should be provided for, including the want of a sufficient restraint upon their passions.Edmund Burke
If government could create jobs and raise children, socialism would have worked.George Gilde
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.Albert Einstein
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.Harry S Truman, Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959
We hold these truths to be self - Evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments a.Thomas Jefferson
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.
Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.Bertrand Russell
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.Richard M. Nixon
The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.Hubert H. Humphrey
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
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.Louis D. Brandeis
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.Ralph Waldo Emerson
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.Barry Goldwate
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.Andrew Johnson
The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth - Rate men.Henry B. Adams
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
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all - wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.Sir Winston Churchill, Hansard, November 11, 1947
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.William Fullbright
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.James Abram Garfield
I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.Pierre Elliott Trudeau
People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments.Dwight D Eisenhowe
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.Henry David Thoreau
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism if our government is to function it must have dissent.Henry Commage
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
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
Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed.I. F. Stone 1907 - 1989
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
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
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
They who seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers... call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.Franklin Delano Roosevelt
