Government Quotes
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
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
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
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.Dwight D. Eisenhowe
All government - - Indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - - Is founded on compromise and barter.Edmund Burke, Speech on the Conciliation of America
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
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.
We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it.George Farquha
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
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.Frederick Bastiat, "Government" published in 1848
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.Barry Goldwate
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.Clement Atlee
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women. On appointing 10 women to top government positions.Lyndon B. Johnson
A democratic government is only as strong as the alert conscience of its people.Charles W. Tobey
Universal suffrage is the government of a house by its nursery.Prince Otto
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.Edward Abbey
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.
In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at the top.Benjamin Franklin
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism if our government is to function it must have dissent.Henry Commage
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
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.Richard M. Nixon
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.George Bernard Shaw
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.William Ellery Channing
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil in its worst state, an intolerable one.Thomas Paine
The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - The principle of civilian ascendency over the military.William Orville Douglas
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.Thomas Jefferson
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.Francis Bacon
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.H. L. Mencken
A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.James Reston
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.Ludwig Mises
The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.George Bancroft
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)
It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.Thomas Paine
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
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.Edward Abbey
Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.Chester Bowles
Religion... is the basis and foundation of government... before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.James Madison
