Government And Politics Quotes

#1. Siddhartha's priority was to get down to the root of the problem. Buddhism is not culturally bound. Its benefits are not limited to any particular society and have no place in government and politics. Siddhartha

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

#2. 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

#3. We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.

James McGreevey

#4. Of course, in the U.S. the government and politics are gaining more and more ground lately at the cost of the law. The government is very smart; it evokes terror in the hearts of people to convince them to give up their freedom and privacy.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi

#5. People who have been in and around government and politics their entire lives may not be able to see the truth. Our government must be fundamentally reformed. The system has to be changed. Our politics can no longer tinker on the edges.

Carly Fiorina

#6. You can study government and politics in school, but the best way to really understand the process is to volunteer your time.

Rob McKenna

#7. 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

#8. In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics.

Lawrence Lessig

#9. 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

#10. Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

Thomas Jefferson

#11. Which, in morals, leads away from superstition, Which, in politics, leads away from government, and Which, in art, leads away from Tradition.

Various

#12. So why was I so scared? Because crime is something relative; it's something the government defines and redefines whenever it pleases.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi

#13. Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.

B.R. Ambedkar

#14. The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.
[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]

James Madison

#15. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Thomas Jefferson

#16. The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.

Jonah Goldberg

#17. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been.

Arthur Koestler

#18. Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis - how incentives influence behavior - to government.

George Will

#19. [Government]is cancerous in head and limbs;only its belly is sound, and the laws it excretes are the most strightforward shit in the world.

Otto Von Bismarck

#20. "Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."

Thomas Paine

#21. When you're talking with a person at this level of the government, at the very highest level, I think you have to be very discreet because he, President Clinton, is very aware that anything he says publicly can have a profound impact on American politics and on world politics.

Lee H. Hamilton

#22. I don't believe in government. I hate politics. I'm against it. And I hope that sometime this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be.

Ray Bradbury

#23. Even now, years later, it's hard to tell why the government stood by and let the city of New Orleans be destroyed, dispatching troops rather than help.

Ted Rall

#24. Scotland has been re-energized, and people all over the country have become involved in - and informed about - politics and government in a way that I have never known before. In short, we have put ourselves firmly in control of our country.

Nicola Sturgeon

#25. Rahm Emanuel seems to think he knows Israel very well, and that the way to treat that country and its democratically-elected government is the way he treats all opponents in politics: by attacking and attacking.

Elliott Abrams

#26. This is a basic function of Congress to keep the government running. And so, what we ought not to do is play politics with those who have been affected by disasters.

David Plouffe

#27. Literature is not at the service of the government; on the contrary, governments should do everything in their power to create a favourable climate for literature.

Murong Xuecun

#28. I would say that since the war, our methods-out and those of the opposition-have become much the same. I mean you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's 'policy' is benevolent, can you now?

John Le Carre

#29. It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#30. No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

Ludwig Von Mises

#31. We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government.

Thomas Jefferson

#32. The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.

Mark Twain

#33. Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people.

Robert Higgs

#34. The Australian sees itself not as a mere newspaper, but as a player in the game of national politics, calling upon the vast resources of the Murdoch empire and the millions of words it has available to it to try to make and unmake governments.

Robert Manne

#35. Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't know much.

Will Rogers

#36. A new chapter in the history of international politics has begun, one in which the pursuit and control of energy resources would be the central dynamic of world affairs, and governments.

Michael Klare

#37. In politics you learn how to say A mean to say B, in wisdom you learn how to say A and keep saying that.

Auliq Ice

#38. I have two bookcases that used to be filled with cookbooks, but now it's mostly books about politics and government. I might just give this all up and run for office.

Graham Elliot

#39. What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.

Christopher Hitchens

#40. I would say that the quality of each man's life is the full measure of that man's commitment of excellence and victory - whether it be football, whether it be business, whether it be politics or government or what have you.

Vince Lombardi

#41. It is horrible how people will use anything as a political monkey wrench and to hell with the country. (Julia Child to Avis DeVoto)

Joan Reardon

#42. Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection.

Donald Rumsfeld

#43. Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.

Beverly LaHaye

#44. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

Penn Jillette

#45. It's amazing that people don't understand that the more the market is involved and the smaller the government, the lower the price, the better the distribution, and the higher the quality.

Ron Paul

#46. If political authority is not limited, the division of powers, ordinarily the guarantee of freedom, becomes a danger and a scourge.

Benjamin Constant

#47. Solidarity and interdependence, a sense of worth, a pride and hope in the future: these are positive gains for those who believe in progressive politics and the beneficial role of government, rather than a detriment.

David Blunkett

#48. Despite all their faults, campaigns are based on the fact that every vote counts, and therefore every person counts. As freestanding societies, they are more open than academia, more idealistic than corporations, more unifying than religions, and more accessible than government itself.

Gloria Steinem

#49. I studied politics and economics at Bristol, and people always assumed that I'd go into politics or a non-government organisation when I left. I might well do this later on. I'd love to represent a West Country seat in the House of Commons.

Ben Elliot

#50. A free America ... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

Frank Lloyd Wright

#51. I love all of the government conspiracy stuff. I love all of the shady backroom White House dealings that are going on, and all of the politics involved. That kind of stuff is just fascinating to me.

Michael Graziadei

#52. One would think that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the intellectual poverty of technocracy and the primacy of politics over it would be a well-established truth in need of no further defense.

Evgeny Morozov

#53. You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.
(Larry King Live, May 11, 2009)

Jesse Ventura

#54. Every person has only so much attention to give, and politics and government takes up only a fraction of what it did 25 years ago.

Robert Teeter

#55. In this respect the differences between the USA and the USSR are those of evangelical dinosaurs competing for domination on one small planet: the first deifies Jesus Christ, the other Karl Marx. Neither has much practical interest in what those two sincere and hard-working fellows actually preached.

Edward Abbey

#56. The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it.

Anthony Burgess

#57. [Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.

Michael Pollan

#58. I went on to explain that it is an honour, and also that we need a transport policy.
"If by 'we' you mean Britain, that's perfectly true," he acknowledged. "But if by 'we' you mean you and me and this Department, we need a transport policy like an aperture in the cranial cavity.

Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay

#59. Laws forbidding adoptees from accessing their original birth certificates are outdated and need to be changed today.

DaShanne Stokes

#60. A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?

George Washington

#61. No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.

Mark Twain

#62. Our ancestors wholeheartedly sacrificed their lives to fight against tyranny, and we are allowing that very same tyranny to exist! Let us open our eyes!

Yanan Melo

#63. Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.

G.K. Chesterton

#64. If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.

Thomas Jefferson

#65. The power of a corrupt government is located in the ignorance and indifference of its people - rjs

Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

#66. It's a path that grows government, restricts freedom and liberty and compromises those values, those Judeo-Christian, Western civilization values that made us such a great and exceptional nation in the first place.

Paul Ryan

#67. What we need, we are told every day, is more and better leadership. But what this demand involves is a closer and closer approximation to fascism. The fascists alone have evolved an efficient form of leadership: efficient leadership is fascism.

Herbert Read

#68. The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

Patrick Henry

#69. The Blair government has lowered the standing of politics and politicians in our country.

Kenneth Clarke

#70. This is what happens in politics. The establishment doesn't like Ted Cruz either. It's not just [Donald] Trump. That's because he is who he is. He is conservative. He does want to get government out of people's lives and that - we can't have that in the establishment.

Rush Limbaugh

#71. Tyrants are obvious, and easy to identify. It is the well entrenched and corrupt establishment that is truly insidious.

A.E. Samaan

#72. In government you carry each hope; each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.

Tony Blair

#73. I cannot watch the city of Chicago be destroyed by petty politics and bad government.

Harold Washington

#74. The mass hallucination of the twentieth century is this: that all these national governments, which each year kill or threaten way more humans than they protect, and take a big chunk of your income to do so, are for some reason a great idea, an inevitable force of fucking nature.

Tyler Mcmahon

#75. The debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

Noam Chomsky

#76. An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.

Thomas Jefferson

#77. The real struggle between an American government and the people was one of power, which was settled when they designed their Constitution, which conceded the sovereignty of the people when it came to politics, and the sovereignty of the consumer when it came to economics.

Ndabaningi Sithole

#78. Remain close to government and away from politics. It means deal more with the authorities. And less with individuals.

Wang Jianlin

#79. In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it
nor hardly in any other government
because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.

Samuel Johnson

#80. 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

#81. As you see the political problems are closely connected with the economical problems. With the help of politics, we will open the way for the economy and this is why all these problems are included in the program of the newly elected government.

Ibrahim Rugova

#82. Anyone who thinks that the vice-president can take a position independent of the president of his administration simply has no knowledge of politics or government. You are his choice in a political marriage, and he expects your absolute loyalty.

Hubert H. Humphrey

#83. We know enough to know that all of this is not quite right. And we know enough to know that settling for what's not quite right is quite wrong.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#84. Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing events as being too incredible and implausible.

Thrity Umrigar

#85. I'm a committed Republican. I believe very strongly in individual liberty. I tend not to think much in terms of group politics. I really am a kind of small government person and I'm most certainly a fiscal conservative and strong on national defense.

Condoleezza Rice

#86. When politics enter into municipal government, nothing resulting therefrom in the way of crimes and infamies is then incredible. It actually enables one to accept and believe the impossible ...

Mark Twain

#87. The excrement bubbles, the century slime decays, and the brainwashing government lackeys would have us say it's under control.

Jethro Tull

#88. Not again, Draper," Frank sighed. "You're not going to stop us from crossing. You and I know that the one thing the Government does even more poorly than provide healthcare is secure its borders.

Randy Quarles

#89. The fact that, in the United States, there are people serving ten-year prison terms for growing marijuana plants in their backyards while Wall Street racketeers, who have defrauded millions of people and destroyed the global economy, walk free is a kind of bizarre hypocrisy that boggles my mind.

Mark Haskell Smith

#90. Government was founded on the working premiss of being primarily an asylum for ineptitude and indigence.

William Faulkner

#91. [David] Maraniss sees [Barack] Obama as a man with a moviegoer's or writer's sensibility, where he is both participating and observing himself participating, and views much of the political process as ridiculous or surreal, even as he is deep into it.

Jane Mayer

#92. The politics of the Essays preach a conservatism natural in one who aspired to rule. Bacon wants a strong central power. Monarchy is the best form of government; and usually the efficiency of a state varies with the concentration of power.

Will Durant

#93. As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.

Pierre Beaumarchais

#94. Government should protect people and regulate corporations, not protect corporations and regulate people.

Anthony Sloan

#95. Our modern world of old story is completely failing humanity. This is the reason that increasing numbers of people have become and are becoming disillusioned from politics. People don't like voting. Whoever you vote, government gets in. Whatever they promise, they never fulfill.

Satish Kumar

#96. If legislation is truly necessary, one would expect the government to be able to provide proof of this beyond anecdote and speculation. Such proof is the least we can expect before we accept a government restriction of liberty as legitimate.

Randy E. Barnett

#97. The world's politics are in turmoil, not to mention the Mideast, where the US has mounted attacks from Libya to Iraq to Syria, and ISIS is attacking governments in today's pipeline rivalry.

Michael Hudson

#98. The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man ... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.
(A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)

Thomas Jefferson

#99. You can't call your life your own: and in return you have safety, if it's worth having at the price you pay.

Richard Adams

#100. I want to preach a new doctrine. A complete separation of business and government.

Franklin D. Roosevelt