Government Quotes
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
No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.J. Michael Straczynski
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia
The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect.Sam Ewig
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 culture has its distinctive and normal system of government. Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism, moderated by assassination.Unknown Russian
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.Frederick Bastiat, "Government" published in 1848
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
Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.Lenny Bruce
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.Ronald Reagan
Universal suffrage is the government of a house by its nursery.Prince Otto
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.John Quincy Adams
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.Edward Abbey
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.Edward Abbey
He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.Confucius, The Confucian Analects
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men.Plato, The Republic
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.Albert Camus
No government can be long secure without formidable opposition.Benjamin Disraeli
All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately... The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the above named organisations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon... must be regarded as an enemy of the national government.SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933.
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.Thomas Jefferson
There has never been a perfect government, because men have passions and if they did not have passions, there would be no need for government.Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
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 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
Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.Chester Bowles
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
So they the Government go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all - Powerful to be impotent.Sir Winston Churchill, Hansard, November 12, 1936
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
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second.Jim Fiebig
The less government we have the better.Ralph Waldo Emerson
The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take away.John S. Coleman
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
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
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
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
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.Clement Atlee
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.Voltaire
