Government Purpose Quotes

#1. He (George W. Bush) is going in the wrong way. And I dare say, that is what the strategy of his administration is, is just to wipe out government's purpose for any social and economic justice at all.

Dennis Kucinich

#2. No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.

Edmund Burke

#3. There are many things the government cant do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.

Lord Acton

#4. Government exists for one purpose: to make things better for all people.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#5. I am more interested in the purpose of government than its mechanics-though the means should at least be good enough to lead to the ends desired.

Aminu Kano

#6. Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.

Frank Herbert

#7. 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

#8. The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive

Stefan Molyneux

#9. 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

#10. Government can contribute to a shared sense of purpose on the part of the citizenry; that's its highest and best application.

William Weld

#11. The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.

Alan Greenspan

#12. The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years.

Neal Boortz

#13. If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

Ilana Mercer

#14. Freedom of the news media must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.

Lee Kuan Yew

#15. If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#16. Looking at the purpose of our government toward the Indians, we find that after subjugating them it has been our policy to collect the different tribes on reservations and support them at the expense of our people.

Nelson A. Miles

#17. God's original purpose for government was to punish the evil and reward the good.

William R. Bowen

#18. The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.

P. J. O'Rourke

#19. The principal purpose of the Democratic Party is to use the force of government to take property away from the people who earn it and give it to people who do not.

Neal Boortz

#20. You have to ask yourself a question: "What's the purpose of the private sector - to support government?" And if the answer is, "Yes, it is," then you're a Democrat.

Rush Limbaugh

#21. The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

Ronald Reagan

#22. But it was more than a planet; it was the living pulse beat of an Empire of twenty million stellar
systems. It had only one, function, administration; one purpose, government; and one manufactured product, law.

Isaac Asimov

#23. The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.

Thomas Jefferson

#24. What is the structure of government that will best guard against the precipitate counsels and factious combinations for unjust purposes, without a sacrifice of the fundamental principle of republicanism?

James Madison

#25. Government is the assumption of authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries.

Benjamin Tucker

#26. Now, with the Transparency Act, the government has set out to reveal wrongdoing by chiefs, not the Department. There is nothing wrong with the act except the context, the attitude and the political purpose.

John Ralston Saul

#27. The fundamental purpose of government is to protect its citizens.

Arlen Specter

#28. It can have a secular purpose and have a relationship to God because God was presumed to be both over the state and the church, and separation of church and state was never meant to separate God from government.

Roy Moore

#29. Oklahoma City bombing was done on purpose. Did you know the Federal Government blew up their own building to blame it on the militias and to get rid of some people that weren't cooperating with the system?

Kent Hovind

#30. To preserve, to improve, and to perpetuate the sources and to direct in their most effective channels the streams which contribute to the public weal is the purpose for which Government was instituted.

John Quincy Adams

#31. I believe that all the measures of the Government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

William Henry Harrison

#32. I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card.

Ron Paul

#33. Governments and the military purport to protect the public from enemies, and if there were no enemies they would have to invent some, for the simple purpose of rationalizing their existence ...

Laurance Labadie

#34. It's increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose - or of a moral language - within government, media or business, could become one of the most dangerous own goals for capitalism and for freedom.

Elisabeth Murdoch

#35. The Founding Fathers did not believe the primary purpose of their guns was to hunt ducks, but to keep the government in line within the bounds of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers said that armed citizens are a bulwark against a tyrant in the White House.

John Coleman

#36. It is not the government's purpose to make a profit the way a company does, because a company doesn't have to give a damn about the unemployed poor or provide services that are non-commercial by definition.

Jean Chretien

#37. The purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not.

Thomas DiLorenzo

#38. The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

Joseph Sobran

#39. If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.

Edmund Burke

#40. The purpose of the right to bear arms is twofold; to allow individuals to protect themselves and their families, and to ensure a body of armed citizenry from which a militia could be drawn, whether that militia's role was to protect the nation, or to protect the people from a tyrannical government.

Glenn Reynolds

#41. It's the nature of government, to build enduring institutions, structures that stay long after their purpose is over. If you pay people to help the poor, you have people who won't be paid if there aren't any poor, so they'll be sure to find some.

Jerry Pournelle

#42. The whole purpose of maintaining your power in government is to make sure that you stay in government. You stay in government by finding out who is liable to be against you. To do that, you try and put your finger into every single pie that is available to you.

David Lloyd

#43. You wonder why your government's completely broken? We lurch from deadline to deadline, and it's on purpose really. We do deadline to deadline because ... 'we've got to go. It's spring break, we're going to be late for spring break, and we've got to go, so we've got to finish this up before we go.'

Rand Paul

#44. We intend to lead a government of purpose and direction so that we can offer the people of this nation the opportunity to move forward to independence, democracy and equality.

Alex Salmond

#45. The methods used for this purpose have made the study of the history of revolutions a rather difficult enterprise. It appears, for example, that there was not a single anti-government action under the reign of Louis Napoleon which had not been inspired by the police itself.

Hannah Arendt

#46. The purpose of a just government is to prevent plunder, not facilitate it.

Glenn Beck

#47. The very purpose of the Second Amendment is to stop the government from disallowing people the means to defend themselves against tyranny. Any proposal to abuse executive power and infringe upon gun rights must be repelled with the stiffest legislative force possible.

Steve Stockman

#48. One of the worst of errors would be the general admission of the proposition that a Government has no right to interfere for any purpose except for that of affording protection.

Nassau William Senior

#49. 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

#50. The sensors have many potential practical uses - in Government buildings, train carriages, cargo containers, on a soldier's lapel - and are a thousand times cheaper than current sensors that are used for the same purpose.

Anne Campbell

#51. The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people.

William J. Clinton

#52. If democracy is control by the people, as it is supposed to be, it is the right form of government. I believe in a complete democracy - individual, political, social, economic. If we really had that, which we don't now, it would be in harmony with divine purpose.

Peace Pilgrim

#53. Coercive redistribution of wealth through government's abuse of law and misapplication of rights destroys individual liberty; ambition, productivity, and wealth; and the purpose of the commonwealth.

Mark R. Levin

#54. The case decided on Thursday, though, seemed promising to takings fans because it wasn't about compensation. It was about the requirement that any government taking must have a 'public purpose.'

Michael Kinsley

#55. The purpose of the UN mechanism, this inspection mechanism, is not to engage in a cat and mouse game with Saddam Hussein and try to find weapons that the Iraqi government is working on concealing.

Douglas Feith

#56. I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose,

Edward Snowden

#57. 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

#58. In no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.

Jeremy Bentham

#59. Do not wait for the government to provide solutions to the people when you can be their answer

Sunday Adelaja

#60. There is in the American Government ... a want of unity ... The Sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will so that instead of making steady way the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water.

James Bryce

#61. The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.

Thomas Jefferson

#62. The instant the Government was organized, at the very first Congress, the Northern States evinced a general desire and purpose to use it for their own benefit, and to pervert its powers for sectional advantage, and they have steadily pursued that policy to this day.

Robert Toombs

#63. Whether people are in America or in Africa, people want to work. They want to have purpose. They want to provide for themselves and their families. They don't want handouts. They don't want to be completely dependent on their governments - even though there's usually no opportunity for that anyway.

Scarlett Johansson

#64. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force.

Robert A. Heinlein

#65. 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

#66. The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.

William O. Douglas

#67. Whatever the lengths to which others may go, His Majesty's Government will never resort to the deliberate attack on women and children and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism.

Neville Chamberlain

#68. Government should not tell you what to do unless there's a compelling public purpose.

Michael Bloomberg

#69. Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.

Harry Truman

#70. If your basic premise about the fundamental purpose of our government is that it must provide for the common defense, then no other position is possible.

Don Nickles

#71. Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.

Herbert Hoover

#72. The trial by jury is a trial by 'the country,' in contradistinction to a trial by the government. The jurors are drawn by lot from the mass of the people, for the very purpose of having all classes of minds and feelings, that prevail among the people at large, represented in the jury.

Lysander Spooner

#73. University printing presses exist, and are subsidised by the Government for the purpose of producing books which no one can read; and they are true to their high calling.

Francis Cornford

#74. Left to me, the whole purpose of government is for the security of the citizens, like the security of lives and property.

Ibrahim Babangida

#75. Here's the dirty little secret: Fiat currency is designed to lose value. Its very purpose is to confiscate your wealth and transfer it to the government. Each time the government prints a new dollar and spends it, the government gets the full purchasing power of that dollar.

Michael Maloney

#76. The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#77. Without the principle of private property there would be no reason for government, which is necessary solely for the purpose of keeping the disinherited within bounds in their quarrels or in their rebellions against those who hold the social wealth

Ricardo Flores Magon

#78. The source of the government's authority is "the consent of the governed." This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

Ayn Rand

#79. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations,

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#80. The spectacle of a great, solvent government paying a fictitious price for gold it did not want and did not need and doing it on purpose to debase the value of its own paper currency was one to astonish the world.

Garet Garrett

#81. A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children. Through compassion for the plight of one individual, government fulfills its purpose as the servant of all the people.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#82. It is not part of the functions of the national government to find employment for people and if we were to appropriate a hundred millions for this purpose, we should be taxing forty millions of people to keep a few thousand employed.

James A. Garfield

#83. Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us.

George Haven Putnam

#84. I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.

Alexander Hamilton

#85. The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians.

William Gilmore Simms

#86. GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

#87. The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

Denis Diderot

#88. What makes America great was a government that was founded to be limited to doing one thing. I really believe the whole purpose of America, the aspirational value - why everybody who wants to come to this country wants to come here - was because we respected the dignity of every living person.

Rick Santorum

#89. The training area was set up where the tournament would actually be held, since putting together two structures to serve the same purpose would be at the level of idiotic redundancy reserved for the highest halls of government.

Drew Hayes

#90. Conservatives insist that government should be " run more like a business." One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation.

Michael Parenti

#91. I clearly believe a lot more than some of my coalition colleagues - Tories - in redistribution and using the tax system for that purpose. I also believe in the government having an active role in the economy, which is having an industrial strategy. I'm not a believer in laissez-faire.

Vince Cable

#92. The sheer number of government employees and welfare recipients effectively transforms the purpose of government from maintaining order to confiscating as much as possible from vulnerable taxpayers.

James Bovard

#93. The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.

Thomas Jefferson

#94. A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much.

Henry Hazlitt

#95. Bush is going in the wrong way. And I dare say, that is what the strategy of his administration is, is just to wipe out government's purpose for any social and economic justice at all. And I'm going to take the country in an opposite direction than he's taking it.

Dennis Kucinich

#96. In America, communities existed before governments. There were many groups of people with a common sense of purpose and a feeling of duty to one another before there were political institutions.

Daniel J. Boorstin

#97. Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others.

George Washington

#98. Experience The Wholeness Of Purpose Is To Be Equipped To Face Ungodly Governmental Policies

Sunday Adelaja

#99. Government grows despite repeated failures to serve the public well because government's purpose no longer is to serve the public. Government now serves primarily the interests of those who work for the government.

Jack Kelly

#100. The President of the Universe holds no real power. His sole purpose is to take attention away from where the power truly exists ...

Douglas Adams