Government Quotes
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.Richard M. Nixon
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.Alexander Hamilton
A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment
When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.Herbert Clark Hoove
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.Ronald Reagan
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)
The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take away.John S. Coleman
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.H. L. Mencken
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
Government never furthered any enterprise but the alacrity with which it got out of the way.Henry David Thoreau
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
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.Frederick Bastiat, "Government" published in 1848
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
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
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.John Adams
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
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.Abraham Lincoln
A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.James Reston
Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.Elias Boudinot
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
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
The less government we have the better.Ralph Waldo Emerson
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.Edward Abbey
Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.Richard Milhous Nixon
If government could create jobs and raise children, socialism would have worked.George Gilde
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second.Jim Fiebig
Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.Thomas Jefferson
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
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.Thomas Jefferson
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
I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.George Bernard Shaw
Besides anarchy, the worst thing in this world is government.Henry Ward Beeche
Its embarrassing, you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on a Best Sellers List.Abbie Hoffman, In response to the success of his book; Steal this Book
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.Thomas Jefferson
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.Bertrand Russell
