Top 100 Government Is Quotes
#1. Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,
that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#2. Americans should not have to wonder if their government is actively looking to subvert them or their political views. We live in a nation where respect for differing beliefs and a vibrant political discourse play an important role in shaping our government.
Mike Turner
#3. The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.
Janet Yellen
#4. The country - or the government - is headed for bankruptcy. So we're going to be continuing to speak out against corporate welfare as something that hurts everybody except those direct beneficiaries.
Charles Koch
#5. The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
Thomas Paine
#6. The fundamental purpose of government is to protect its citizens.
Arlen Specter
#7. Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#8. A coal miner from Chongjin whom I met in 2004 in China told me, People are not stupid. Everybody thinks our own government is to blame for our terrible situation. We all know we think that and we all know that everybody else thinks that. We don't need to talk about it.
Barbara Demick
#9. He's always complaining about the fucking recession and how the government is working against people like him. He calls himself working class, which I think is a bit ironic since he doesn't work.
Ida Lokas
#10. Popular and democratic government is the only constitution which suits France, and all those who are worthy of the name of men.
Camille Desmoulins
#11. Now, I learned soon enough, that among the three, two don't trust the third one - the third one is the government. Both industry and unions feel the government is a talking organization and a spending organization.
Shimon Peres
#12. I believe the relationship you have with your government is not so different to a love relationship.
Jill Scott
#13. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ...
James Madison
#14. It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.
Wendell Berry
#15. I'm perennially intrigued how people who lead largely evidence-based lives can, in a belief-based part of their mind, be certain that an invisible, divine entity created an entire universe just for us, or that the government is stockpiling space aliens in a secret desert location.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#16. Government is all show when it isn't murder in the dark ... or soldiers in the open.
Orson Scott Card
#17. The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.
Austin O'Malley
#18. The backlash against Big Government is an encouraging sign of a growing resistance to the mission creep of federal power.
Bob Barr
#19. All legitimate government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily agreed upon by the parties to it, for the protection of their rights against wrong-doers. In its voluntary character it is precisely similar to an association for mutual protection against fire or shipwreck.
Lysander Spooner
#20. The debate on how to shrink the federal government is at the core of our problem of government not doing its job.
Darrell Issa
#21. National security is a place where the private sector could be helpful because the government is woefully behind the technology curve. But secondly, the bureaucratic processes that have been in place since 9/11 are woefully inadequate as well.
Carly Fiorina
#22. Finally, assuming that many of those are fulfilled, which won't be easy in tight budget times, we're taking the supply side at the basic research level, because that's where government is absolutely fundamental.
Bill Gates
#23. The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.
Vladimir Lenin
#26. The United States is at a critical juncture in time. Our government is riddled with historic debt, and the limited resources of philanthropic and non-profit efforts cannot meet the scale of social challenges we face with necessary force.
Simon Mainwaring
#27. there are many ignorant sentimentalists who believe that our government is deserving of our loyal cooperation and support, and that every good patriot with an innocent conscience should be glad to answer any questions from government agents. That is hogwash.
James Duane
#28. I believe that government is too large, costs too much, spends too much, and has too much regulatory power in our lives.
Tim Walberg
#29. My government is in no sense anti-Russian.
Donald Tusk
#30. The one thing that I know government is good for is countervailing against monopoly. It's not great at that either, but it's the only force I know that is fairly reliable.
John Perry Barlow
#31. I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with [the unemployed, the sick without medical care, human welfare, etc.] and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution.
Barry M. Goldwater
#32. While many of Mr. Obama's ideas warrant skepticism, conservative opposition to any expanded role for government is a mistake.
Paul Singer
#33. Whenever the government is involved, there is an element of coercion.
Dinesh D'Souza
#34. I learnt a lot in government, and I've learnt a lot since leaving government. The kind of journey of being in government is that you start at your most popular and least capable, and you end at your most capable and least popular.
Tony Blair
#35. The government is a functionary of the corporations - and there's nothing new about that. You can find people in the 1930s talking about the army basically working for Wall Street in all of these countries [it invades].
Henry Rollins
#36. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.
Barack Obama
#37. The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government ... Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.
John Ralston Saul
#39. And a special thank you to the citizens of Massachusetts: You are paying all the taxes, creating all the jobs, raising all the children. This government is yours. Thank you for letting me serve you. I love this job.
Mitt Romney
#40. One of the really positive things about minority government is that there is the necessity to broker policy positions. What happens is you get a hybrid of what a single party might do. And I don't think that is a bad thing.
Kathleen Wynne
#41. Our government is pleased to welcome MANA to Ontario, and were thrilled to announce renewed steel production and workers back on the job in Hamilton. Global leaders such as MANA choose to invest in Ontario because of our competitive business environment, skilled workforce and focus on innovation.
Sandra Pupatello
#42. The viewpoint of the government is that the people must have full access to all information worldwide.
Hassan Rouhani
#43. The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.
James Madison
#44. We need the private sector's help, because government is not innovating. Technology is running ahead by leaps and bound. The private sector will help, just as I helped after 9/11. But they must be engaged, and they must be asked. I will ask them. I know them.
Ted Cruz
#45. We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.
Sydney Schanberg
#46. An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Voltaire
#47. The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.
Gene Sharp
#48. One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government ... is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#49. Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else.
Nicolas Walter
#50. Maybe it's my libertarian philosophy: but being in government is hard.
John Bolton
#51. Parties do not maintain themselves. They are maintained by effort. The government is not self-existent. It is maintained by the effort of those who believe in it. The people of America believe in American institutions, the American form of government and the American method of transacting business.
Calvin Coolidge
#53. Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Leo Tolstoy
#54. Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings ...
H.L. Mencken
#55. The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.
Edward Abbey
#56. Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there's a criticism to be made today, it's that the press isn't doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information.
Walter Cronkite
#57. I've found that when you roll up your sleeves and join people in their daily work, they tend to open up quite a bit and let you know what they really think about the issues facing our country and what kind of job they think the government is doing.
Bob Beauprez
#58. The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.
Lord Melbourne
#59. The challenge for any government is how do you do two things at the same time. How do you put money forward for things like the payroll tax holiday, for things like getting a jump-start on infrastructure, for building schools, and make the decisions for long-term deficit reduction.
Jacob Lew
#60. The only legitimate purpose of government is to serve citizens, and ... the only legitimate purpose of technology is to improve our lives, not to manipulate or enslave us.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#61. It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine which religion is true, or what false. Our government is a civil, and not a religious institution.
Richard Mentor Johnson
#62. Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.
Janice Rogers Brown
#63. Government is really successful when it's willing to make big, bold objectives, like, 'We're going to get to the moon.' But without leaders with big ideas, we get stuck.
Bill Maris
#64. Using the market to gradually fix a totalitarian government is like making a pot of tea by running a volcano through a glacier.
Clay Shirky
#65. Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote.
Will Harvey
#66. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.
Joseph Pulitzer
#67. The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart.
Thomas Jefferson
#68. Liberalism is dead, so dead that Democrats have all become moderate Republicans, and the heavy hand of Big Government is now limp and damp and trembly.
Garrison Keillor
#69. Government is not using modern technology so much to modernize and improve services as it is to regulate, punish, collect taxes and keep an eye on us. They'd rather rule than serve.
James Cook
#70. Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
Frank Herbert
#71. Religion and faith are very personal matters. So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the Constitution of India.
Narendra Modi
#72. But we are learning from the teaching and example of Jesus that life itself is a religion, that nothing is more sacred than a human being, that the end of all right institutions, whether the home or the church or an educational establishment, or a government, is the development of the human soul.
Anna Howard Shaw
#73. If the government is going to mandate levels and punish schools for failing, they should send that money to the school system.
Robert Duncan
#74. In no way am I supporting or suggesting that a Conservative government is a good thing, far from it.
Jarvis Cocker
#75. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Ludwig Von Mises
#76. I believe, - "That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Henry David Thoreau
#77. There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
Baron De Montesquieu
#78. If you think that a coup to overthrow the elected government is a coup everywhere, then you should remember how elections in Ukraine took place in 2004, how elections in Georgia took place in 2003, when the elections results have been torn and thrown away by revolutionary action.
Sergei Lavrov
#79. Iran is part of the problem, not the solution. And the Russian government is ignoring reality.
Lindsey Graham
#80. The Congress is a dysfunctional institution; it's broken. One of our three branches of government is broken.
Carl Bernstein
#81. A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.
James Reston
#82. The great object of the institution of civil government is the improvement of those who are parties to the social compact.
John Quincy Adams
#83. If you are focusing your anger at government, you are focusing your anger at all of us. Government is just a personification of this country.
William J. Clinton
#85. A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B.F. Skinner
#87. Someone told me "stop telling everybody that the United States government is Terrorist and this country has been made by blood over millions of dead-bodies." I was thinking: "wasn't for the same reason I have been kicked out from Iran?
Kambiz Shabankareh
#88. To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#89. Government is not the answer to the problem - it IS the problem.
Ronald Reagan
#90. Saying that government is not the way to solve problems is not saying that humanity cannot solve its problems. What I've finally learned is this: Despite the obstacles created by governments, voluntary networks of private individuals - through voluntary exchange - solve all sorts of challenges.
John Stossel
#91. The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.
Thomas Sowell
#92. I think everybody should have the choice [with drugs] the same as helmets. You should be able to say whether you want to wear one or not. By making drugs illegal, the government is intervening into our lives a little too much.
Sonny Barger
#93. Humaneness and justice are the means by which to govern properly. When government is carried out properly, people feel close to the leadership and think little of dying for it.
Du Mu
#94. The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.
Tom Hodgkinson
#95. The belief in "government" is not based on reason; it is based on faith.
Larken Rose
#96. Government is supposed to be about how we do things together, and we can do that much more together if we use technology smartly right now.
Jennifer Pahlka
#97. The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world - no ideals.
Golda Meir
#98. It is said that government is a necessary evil, but it is far more evil than it is necessary.
James Cook
#99. The government is supposed to respond to the will of the people. Not dictate to the people what they are doing.
Benjamin Carson
#100. I have always felt that the real purpose of government is to enhance the lives of people and that a leader can best do that by restraining government in most cases instead of enlarging it at every opportunity.
Gerald R. Ford
