Legitimate Government Quotes

#1. Throughout the world, the very moment a legitimate government starts fascist implementations, it loses its legitimacy! When a government becomes illegitimate, it is no longer a government but an outlaw!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#2. If we speak calmly, in a businesslike fashion, let me draw your attention to the fact that Russia supplies arms to the legitimate government of Syria in full compliance with the norms of international law. We are not breaching any rules and norms.

Vladimir Putin

#3. I'm not against the government building roads. That is a legitimate government function. But I am very much against the government claiming that their building the road is the reason somebody on the road is successful.

Rush Limbaugh

#4. 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

#5. It is my belief that industry and government around the world should work even more closely to protect the privacy and security of Internet users, and promote the exchange of ideas, while respecting legitimate government considerations.

Bill Gates

#6. The only legitimate government in the world, is the Iranian government.

Ali Meshkini

#7. Russia has not taken part and is not going to take part in any actions aimed at removing legitimate government.

Vladimir Putin

#8. 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

#9. I have great respect for the Taiwanese. They have done an extraordinary job. But it was not a sustainable position to say that the legitimate government of China resides in Taiwan, which at that time didn't have much contact with the mainland.

Henry A. Kissinger

#10. The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth.

John Quincy Adams

#11. In addition, as citizens, we must fight in their incipient stages all movements by government or party or pressure groups that seek to limit the legitimate liberties of any of our fellow citizens.

Wendell Willkie

#12. Even in non-democratic countries, people have a legitimate interest in knowing about actions taken by the government.

Peter Singer

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. There is a legitimate concern about wealth distribution in the United States, but the answer is not to scapegoat any individual who makes over $200,000 per year and to try to sell the fraud that the government can equitably take the money of those who have earned it and give it to those who haven't.

Conrad Black

#16. The pretense that the workings of the mind, like the actions of the body, are subject to the control of laws, does not seem sufficiently demolished ... The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

Thomas Jefferson

#17. It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction.

Stephen Harper

#18. A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

#19. My plan is to bring back like the Bracero Program (search) from 1944 that ran for 20 years where the Mexican government vets these people. I mean, they pay for it, and they get green cards, and they're actually legitimate. And then seal the border.

Kinky Friedman

#20. I totally accept that it's a legitimate criticism that when you are involved in the day-to-day scrum of government ... that what can get lost is the narrative, the hymn sheet ... the song that inspires and lifts people's sights.

Nick Clegg

#21. Keeping a monopoly on legitimate violence is still the proven best way to limit violence and allow reason some asylum where it can be freely practiced.

Jacques Ranciere

#22. Passionate ideological opposition to race preferences does not seem to be part of the Bush DNA, and President Bush has been no exception to this rule ... It is not the legitimate business of government in America to promote 'diversity.'

Ward Connerly

#23. I entirely concur in the propriety of restoring to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is a legitimate constitution. And, if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for consistent and stable government.

James Madison

#24. The illusion that power lies within the hands of the common man is more important than legitimate efficiency within the government.

Evan Meekins

#25. Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.

Lord Acton

#26. I do admit to mocking atheists, because mockery is a legitimate form of debate according to my rule Book. God Himself mocks evil men who refuse His moral government (see Proverbs 1:26-27).

Ray Comfort

#27. That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.

Ezra Taft Benson

#28. I say that when you elect a president you want a man to manage the legitimate business of your government. The government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it away.

Barry Goldwater

#29. There's a lot of the Midwest and the West in Justice Rehnquist's approach to constitutional law. And by that I mean a recognition that people know pretty well how to govern themselves, that government that is closest to the people is apt to be more responsive to their legitimate concerns and needs.

John Roberts

#30. My quarrel is not with the legitimate role of government but with the unlimited role of government.

Rick Perry

#31. A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.

Thomas B. Macaulay

#32. Taxation is the legitimate support of government.

Adolphe Thiers

#33. Almost half of the Turkish population believes it is not legitimate to criticize the government. Interestingly, this correlates with the number of supporters of Erdogan's government.

Elif Safak

#34. We are kidding ourselves if we don't think of the drug business as a legitimate business. It's what funds governments. It's too much money to ignore.

Daniel Craig

#35. Most of Albania considers this Government to be legitimate.

Fatos Nano

#36. In other words Americans, and especially Americans in the South and West, never fully signed on to a social contract that would vest the government with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

Steven Pinker

#37. The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

James Madison

#38. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

John Stuart Mill

#39. The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government.

Thomas Jefferson

#40. With those people, I'm very far apart, because I believe that government access to communications and stored records is valuable when done under tightly controlled conditions which protect legitimate privacy interests.

Dorothy Denning

#41. But, no matter how big or small dictators are, they all accept 100 percent the principle that granting government authority to manipulate our lives and control our property is legitimate and morally acceptable.

Ron Paul

#42. I believe that smaller government is better government. But I also believe that in the areas where government does play a legitimate role, we should demand that it is done better.

Scott Walker

#43. it will have to overcome a social vision that is by now deeply rooted and powerfully dominant among liberals: the idea that the only genuine liberty is individual liberty, and that the only legitimate authority is the authority of the national government. The

Yuval Levin

#44. In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#45. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.

Katharine Graham

#46. 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

#47. Government has a legitimate function, but the private sector has one too, and it is superior. In other words, people are better than institutions.

Cal Thomas

#48. Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external invasion.

William Godwin

#49. government is legitimate not so much because it represents the 'general will', but because its policies are, ideally and counterfactually, the result of the public deliberation of all who are concerned by the decision

Frederic Vandenberghe

#50. Well, it's very clear that the Arab population is rising because they'd like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.

Al-Waleed Bin Talal

#51. As soon as the legitimate Lebanese government is convinced that the conditions have ripened and that Lebanon is able to maintain stability on its own ... Then, the Syrian forces will return to their homeland.

Bashar Al-Assad

#52. The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

Thomas Jefferson

#53. Government has a legitimate sphere of operation. The problem arises when that sphere continually expands, encompassing areas where government lacks legitimacy.

William A. Dembski

#54. The position now taken by the Government is absolutely destructive of legitimate business, because they outline no rule of conduct for business of any magnitude.

Theodore Roosevelt

#55. Improved turnout will give parliament and government the appearance of being more legitimate.

Peter Lynch

#56. I think George Bush is the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties. He is not the legitimate president. This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.

Ken Livingstone

#57. My concept of government's role in people's lives is that it is limited but legitimate, and essential when people have nowhere else to turn.

Olympia Snowe

#58. Information technology alone cannot provide us an absolute shield against its evil twin disinformation technology. Our only protection is law, and that protection is available to us only if legitimate governments have the power to govern.

Paul Starr

#59. A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

Max Weber

#60. I cannot help concurring with the opinion that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government.

Edmund Burke

#61. The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Thomas Jefferson

#62. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Ronald Reagan

#63. [The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.

Thomas Jefferson

#64. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

#65. History will eventually depict as legitimate the efforts of the Iraqi resistance to destabilise and defeat the American occupation forces and their imposed Iraqi collaborationist government.

Scott Ritter

#66. The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, all the regulator agencies - if there's a problem of the financial mechanism in society, the only one to fix it is government. They've got a legitimate role.

Dick Cheney

#67. No matter what theory of the origin of government you adopt, if you follow it out to its legitimate conclusions it will bring you face to face with the moral law.

Henry Van Dyke

#68. 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