Government Quotes
A revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.John Adams, (Diary, 1786)
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 preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered... deeply... finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.George Washington
Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.Chester Bowles
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.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
What experience and history teach is this - That nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.Ronald Reagan
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.Bertrand Russell
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.Edward Abbey
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
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.Edward Abbey
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.Alexander Tyle
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
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.Harry S Truman
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.Ambrose Bierce
Judge of thine improvement, not by what thou speakest or writest, but by the firmness of thy mind, and the government of thy passions and affections.Thomas Fulle
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.Aristotle
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
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
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.John Quincy Adams
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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
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
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.Justice Anthony Kennedy
I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.Dame Edith Sitwell
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.
There is no legitimacy on earth but in a government which is the choice of the nation.Joseph Bonaparte
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers wthout government, I should not hesita.Thomas Jefferson
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
On account of us 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
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
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
Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.Harry S Truman
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.George Washington
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.Edward Abbey
