Government Quotes

Aristotle, politics - if liberty and equality, as is thought by some...
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Frederick Bastiat, "Government" published in 1848
Georg wilhelm friedrich hegel - what experience and history teach is this - that...
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Alexander tyle - a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of...
In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.
Louis D. Brandeis
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
The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do and find the cure all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.
Richard Feynman
A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
Benjamin Disraeli, Speech in the House of Commons, Mar. 3, 1845
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
President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people.
Ralph Nade
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
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva
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
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Ronald Reagan
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
Harry S Truman, August 8, 1950
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.
Besides anarchy, the worst thing in this world is government.
Henry Ward Beeche
It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Hubert Humphrey
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
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
Harry S Truman, Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959
The most valuable function performed by the federal government is entertainment.
Dave Barry
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
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 spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
Will Rogers
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.
Louis D. Brandeis
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
Abraham Lincoln
All in all, I am not surprised that the people who want to unravel the social contract start with young adults. Those who are urged to feel afraid, very afraid, have both the greatest sense of independence and the most finely honed skepticism about government.
Ellen Goodman
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
Adlai E. Jr. Stevenson
A little rebellion now and then... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787
Government expands to absorb revenue - And then some.
Tom Wicke
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Benjamin Franklin
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
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
What government is the best That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Johann von Goethe
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
No government can be long secure without formidable opposition.
Benjamin Disraeli