Top 100 Bad Government Quotes
#1. A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
Noah Webster
#2. It shouldn't take extreme courage and a willingness to go to prison for decades or even life to blow the whistle on bad government acts done in secret. But it does. And that is an immense problem for democracy, one that all journalists should be united in fighting.
Glenn Greenwald
#3. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government.
Joseph Story
#4. Millions who endure poverty and bad government can now know what they are missing. To see how the other half lives all they have to do is switch on their television sets.
Richard M. Nixon
#5. Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad.
Thomas Frank
#6. The banking collapse was caused, more than anything, by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation, rather than by greed.
Nigel Farage
#7. It is the aim of good government to stimulate production, of bad government to encourage consumption.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#8. History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
#9. Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.
George Soros
#10. Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant,
G.K. Chesterton
#11. History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
#12. I cannot watch the city of Chicago be destroyed by petty politics and bad government.
Harold Washington
#13. A man who doesn't detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government in earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#15. Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.
Ambrose Bierce
#16. It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.
Karl Popper
#17. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
#18. Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.
William Cobbett
#19. The most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#20. People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
James Bovard
#21. I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.
Molly Ivins
#22. To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.
Mark Twain
#23. Americans are hard working, innovative, proud people who want bad government policies and high taxes to get out of the way so they can take care of their families and pursue their dreams.
Tim Walberg
#24. A people can prosper under a very bad government and suffer under a very good one, if in the first case the local administration is effective and in the second it is inefficient.
Annie Besant
#25. The first task of the doctor is ... political: the struggle against disease must begin with a war against bad government. Man will be totally and definitively cured only if he is first liberated ...
Michel Foucault
#26. To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.
Richard Henry Lee
#27. The truth is in California you can't build a new manufacturing facility, and businesses are leaving in droves because of bad government policy.
Carly Fiorina
#28. A constant stream of 'free' money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power. As aid flows in, there is nothing more for the government to do - it doesn't need to raise taxes, and as long as it pays the army, it doesn't have to take account of its disgruntled citizens.
Dambisa Moyo
#29. In a democratic country everything is very simple: If you choose a good government, good things will happen; if you choose a bad government, bad things will happen!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#30. Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.
Mackenzie King
#31. The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
Chinua Achebe
#32. The root cause of poverty is social injustice and the bad government that abets it
Colin Powell
#33. I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.
Barack Obama
#34. My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.
John Sharp Williams
#35. Life under a good government is rarely dramatic; life under a bad government is always so.
Oscar Wilde
#36. A government which is not liked by the artists is certainly a bad government, because artist sees very well what is behind the masks!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#37. Instead of politicians, let the monkeys govern the countries; at least they will steal only the bananas!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#38. War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is.
Revolution is when you decide that for yourself.
Benjamin Franklin
#39. Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
Denis Diderot
#40. What seems fair enough against a squalid huckster of bad liquor may take on a different face, if used by a government determined to suppress political opposition under the guise of sedition.
Learned Hand
#41. The bed sheet brigade is bad enough, but the real threat to Americans and human rights today is the plain clothes Klux in the halls of government and certain black-robed Klux on court benches.
Stetson Kennedy
#42. I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability which is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.
Mahatma Gandhi
#43. Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. If taxes and debt are made all the people can bear when times are good, there will be certain disaster when times are bad.
Calvin Coolidge
#44. Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it ... Where does security lie, anyway - security against the thief, a bad man, the murderer? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government.
E.B. White
#45. The Tea Party elites believe government is evil. Everything about government is bad, and they blame all problems, even non-economic problems, problems that were caused by the private sector, on government.
Chuck Schumer
#46. The Liberals talk about a stable government but we don't know how bad the stable is going to smell.
Tommy Douglas
#47. When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.
Ron Paul
#48. If we continue to stand up for our rights, none of us alive today will ever have to pick up a weapon against our government. The bad news is that if those rights are watered down or taken away, the risk of tyranny will increase with each passing generation.
Glenn Beck
#49. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful - but also very harmful to our society.
George Soros
#50. Really, what the government is asking Apple to do is to make every individual who uses an iPhone susceptible to hacking by bad people, foreign governments, and anyone who wants.
John McAfee
#51. If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade ... a real change-maker represents a real threat. So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two-dimensional; they're easy to absorb.
William J. Clinton
#53. Let each one of us say, 'I am an American. I intend to stay an American. I will do my best to wipe from my heart hate, rancor and political prejudice. I will sustain my government. And, through good days or bad, I will try to serve my country.'
Stephen Vincent Benet
#54. The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
Bob Schieffer
#55. It is bad policy to regulate everything ... where things may better regulate themselves and can be better promoted by private exertions; but it is no less bad policy to let those things alone which can only be promoted by interfering social power.
Friedrich List
#56. Libertarians believe that any government interference is bad. Anyone with a brain knows that climate change needs governmental leadership, and they can smell this is bad news for their philosophy. Their ideology is so strongly held that, remarkably, it's overcoming the facts.
Jeremy Grantham
#57. The only good government ... Is a bad one in a hell of a fright.
Joyce Cary
#58. One of those unfortunate women who did not find nice men interesting. She found undesirables desirable. She sought out unpleasant boyfriends, then complained about them as though the government had allocated them to her.
Carrie Fisher
#59. I'm a bad, inconsistent person, but at least I'm not a member of the Tea Party griping incoherently about too much government, but flashing my Medicare card every other day to a doctor because I'm 400 pounds overweight.
George Singleton
#60. Because many of us make mistakes that can have bad consequences, some intellectuals believe that it is the role of government to intervene and make some of our decisions for us. From what galaxy government is going to hire creatures who do not make mistakes is a question they leave unanswered.
Thomas Sowell
#61. Our politicians are stupid. And the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning. And they send the bad ones over because they don't want to pay for them. They don't want to take care of them. Why should they when the stupid leaders of the United States will do it for them?
Donald Trump
#62. The essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens. Any government which assumes that the population is going to do something evil has already lost its franchise to govern.
Philip K. Dick
#63. I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.
Milton Friedman
#64. We're supposed to strive for harmony, and that's what the art of tea is supposed to accomplish ... but harmony is very, very difficult to achieve in this country. Tea ceremony is powerless. But it's also not such a bad thing either. You should enjoy it while you can.
Koushun Takami
#65. Almost everything wrong with our health care system comes from government interference with the free market. If the health care system is broken, then fix it. Don't try to invent a new one premised on all the bad ideas that are causing problems in the first place.
Ann Coulter
#66. The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Milton Friedman
#67. Never in the history of the world has there been a situation so bad that the government can't make it worse.
Henry Morgenthau Jr.
#68. You know, you don't retreat in the defense of freedom. You don't retreat in the defense of moral government and limited government. You don't retreat because people are going to defend bad things.
Russell Pearce
#69. Government and politics isn't like a reality TV show. It's not about voting the bad guys out of the house. You know, it's about what do we need to take our country or our state or our city forward? And people, frankly, would be well advised to really get back into understanding politics.
Campbell Newman
#70. Blaming the government for all the bad things that happen.
Paulo Coelho
#71. There can be no good character in civil government if there is none in the people. You cannot make a good omelet with bad eggs.
Rousas John Rushdoony
#72. When we were scared about 9/11, we federalized the airport security, we spent millions for body armor for dogs in Ohio. All that over-reaction comes from fear and government - bad combination.
John Stossel
#73. The US economy today is in really bad shape. Our economic growth is minimal, our regulatory burden is horrific, taxes are high, businessmen are not investing in growth, and consumers and government are loaded up with debt.
Yaron Brook
#74. I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Salman Rushdie
#75. Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years.
Terry Teachout
#76. Years ago on my radio show, I used to say, 'I'm a conservative, but I'm not in a bad mood about it.' I've always believed that civility in heavy doses is essential in self-government.
Mike Pence
#77. An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.
Anthony Burgess
#78. The ONLY thing that seems to band all nations together, is that their governments are universally bad ...
Frank Zappa
#79. The Republicans have a habit of having three bad years and one good one, and the good one always happens to be election years.
Will Rogers
#80. Contrary to the prevailing notion that good governance is bad politics, in reality good governance is good politics. A government should work keeping in mind the welfare of future generations, not the next election.
Narendra Modi
#81. In adopting the republican form of government, I not only took it as a man does his wife, for better, for worse, but, what few men do with their wives, I took it knowing all its bad qualities.
Gouverneur Morris
#82. If bad things are happening in your country, remember, the first responsible person is your stupid government! But if you have supported that government, now, you are the first responsible person! So sit down and shut up!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#83. Democracy, loudly upheld as a cure for much of the ailing world, has proved no guarantor of political wisdom, even if it remains the least bad form of government.
Pankaj Mishra
#84. Despite Russia's move to raise interest rates this week, the value of the ruble has continued to crash. Russia's economy is so bad, Edward Snowden had to put government secrets on Craigslist.
Jimmy Fallon
#86. It was a bad idea, because I think that any government reorganization has to come in relatively small bites, or else you get indigestion.
Warren Rudman
#87. Bad as any government may be, it is seldom worse than anarchy.
Aesop
#88. You govern people, you do good and bad things.
If you don't have guts to do bad, then step aside.
Toba Beta
#89. The Georges were fair; they left all to the Government; but Anne was very bad and a tyrant. She tyrannised over the Irish. She died broken-hearted with all the bad things that were going on about her. For Queen Anne was very wicked; oh, very wicked, indeed!
Lady Gregory
#90. We no longer need companies, institutions, or government to organize us. We now have the tools to organize ourselves. We can find each other and coalesce around political causes or bad companies or talent or business or ideas.
Jeff Jarvis
#91. Acid wasn't getting a whole lot of bad press at the time, and as I saw the whole bad-press thing happen, I became aware that the government had done a whole lie on all the other benign drugs as well. It became clear to me that the government wanted no real drug education.
Tommy Rettig
#92. Forget the state concerns
we think this is bad for churches. Most churches are small and not ready to handle 500 pages of government red tape.
Michael Tanner
#93. In recent years, anyone in the government, certainly anyone in the FBI or the CIA, or recently, in again, Clint's film, In the Line of Fire, the main bad guy is the chief advisor to the president.
Charlton Heston
#94. I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than a country run like heaven by the Americans, because however a bad Filipino government might be, we can always change it.
Manuel L. Quezon
#95. The U.S. immigration laws are bad - really, really bad. I'd say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government's name.
Bill Gates
#96. Poverty is bad,
but so is decadence.
Tyranny is bad,
but so is chaos.
Injustice is bad,
but so is godlessness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#97. Presidents don't have a whole lot to say about prosperity or the economy. Government cannot create prosperity. There are a lot of other factors that determine whether there are good times or bad times.
Phyllis Schlafly
#98. The Germans made just about every bad investment you could have made. They invested in Icelandic banks. They invested in Greek government bonds. They were heavy into Irish banks, big into Irish banks, and they bought U.S. subprime mortgage bonds.
Michael Lewis
#99. Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad ... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.
Thomas Hobbes
#100. To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in India's Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.
Yann Martel
