Top 100 Public Government Quotes
#1. 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
#2. The steel workers have now buried their dead, while the widows weep and watch their orphaned children become objects of public charity. The murder of these unarmed men has never been publicly rebuked by any authoritative officer of the state or federal government.
John L. Lewis
#3. Since when do grown men and women, who presume to hold high government office and exercise what they think of as "moral leadership," require ethics officers to tell them whether it is or isn't permissible to grab the secretary's behind or redirect public funds to their own personal advantage?
Meg Greenfield
#4. I really think that discrimination and racism is a horrible thing. And I don't want any form of it in our government, in our public sphere.
Rand Paul
#5. 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
#6. American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does.
Robert Kuttner
#7. A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.
Calvin Coolidge
#8. 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
#9. I am committed to working towards a more transparent, accountable, and ethical federal government worthy of the public's trust.
Mike Quigley
#10. Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.
Martha Gellhorn
#11. Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual.
George C. Marshall
#12. As the contest proceeded, public interest increased and the entire country watched to see which company would win the big government subsidies through the mountains.
John Moody
#13. The real issue for the public is to figure out which narrative do we want. We can have a bigger government, if that's the public's choice. It'll just require higher taxes on every American. Do you want that, or do you want smaller government, smaller taxes?
Glenn Hubbard
#15. Just as China achieved much more than India in the realm of public health and education under an austere Communist regime, so its economic growth under a capitalist-friendly government strikes a visitor from India as nothing less than spectacular.
Pankaj Mishra
#16. Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection.
Ambrose Bierce
#17. We have seen the damage already caused to the music industry and we have to continue to make the public and government bodies globally aware of the damage that will happen if DVD piracy is not brought under control.
Callum McDougall
#18. 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
#19. If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.
John Maynard Keynes
#20. Gold and silver are always in demand, regardless of clime, century, or government in power. But public confidence in and, hence, demand for paper money depends on the ultimate confidence - or lack thereof - of the public in the viability of the issuing government.
Murray Rothbard
#21. 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
#22. I will protect your tax money! It won't be spent on Prime Minister and Governor houses. InshALLAH the day PTI government comes in power these walls of governor houses will be brought down. We will break these walls and make libraries and playgrounds for the public to use
Imran Khan
#23. The politician and the government expert receive their revenues, not from service voluntarily purchased on the market, but from a compulsory levy on the populace. These officials, therefore, wholly lack the pecuniary incentive to care about serving the public properly and competently.
Murray Rothbard
#24. A government cannot be expected to allow independence to its central bank unless that bank is also accountable to it and to the wider public. That is, the central bank must be able to be judged on whether or not it has achieved its agreed objective.
Ian Macfarlane
#25. If we had a truth-in Government act comparable to the truth-in-advertising law, every note issued by the Treasury would be obliged to include a sentence stating: This note will be redeemed with the proceeds from an identical note which will be sold to the public when this one comes due.
Walter Wriston
#26. A fundamental premise of American democratic theory is that government exists to serve the people ... Public records are one portal through which the people observe their government, ensuring its accountability, integrity, and equity while minimizing sovereign mischief and malfeasance
Sandra Day O'Connor
#27. The task of government was not to stop selfish striving - a hopeless task - but to harness it for the public good.
Ron Chernow
#28. My focus and that of all members of the Government responsible for delivering services to the public is to make sure that the public sector can use all the skills it needs to do the job the public wants it to do.
Estelle Morris
#29. Government employees are public servants and prohibited by the Constitution from inhibiting religious freedom, that is a far cry from sneaking around and into a church and acting like KGB agents.
Mathew Staver
#30. accountable government does not come through elections. It comes through respect for law, through public spirit and through a culture of confession. To
Roger Scruton
#31. The more women we elect to public office, the more wholesome the whole process will be, whether it's government, politics, whatever.
Nancy Pelosi
#32. The general public believes that if a health claim is on the label the government backs that up, ... This sells food products, no question.
Marion Nestle
#33. They have seized upon the government by bribery and corruption. They have made speculation and public robbery a science. They have loaded the nation, the state, the county, and the city with debt.
Denis Kearney
#34. It is only when there is the supervision and critical oversight from the people that the government will be in a position to do an even better job, and employees of government departments will be the true public servants of the people.
Wen Jiabao
#35. There is no denying that Snowden's dramatic disclosures, despite the damage they did to U.S. intelligence, accomplished a salutary service in alerting both the public and the government to the potential danger of a surveillance leviathan." (p.299)
Edward Jay Epstein
#36. Republicans and Democrats have used accounting gimmicks and competing government analyses to deceive the public into believing that 2 + 2 = 6. If our leaders cannot agree on the numbers, if 'facts' are fictional, how can they possibly have a substantive debate on solutions?
J. C. Watts
#37. All officers of the Intelligence Community, and especially its most senior officer, must conduct themselves in a manner that earns and retains the public trust. The American people are uncomfortable with government activities that do not take place in the open, subject to public scrutiny and review.
Dennis C. Blair
#38. For Madison, on the other hand, "a Public Debt is a Public curse," and "in a Representative Government greater than in any other."26
Joseph J. Ellis
#39. Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.
Daniel Webster
#40. 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
#41. Public policy in the twentieth century was about protecting and expanding the social compact, based on recognition that effective government at the federal level provides rules and services and safety measures that contribute to a better society.
Carl Bernstein
#42. If the government wants to do social policy, it should not be done in a quasi-public company. If you have a mortgage guarantee company which is done by the U.S. government, it should be guaranteed by the originators, i.e., the shareholder.
Jamie Dimon
#43. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.
James Madison
#44. Private property is redundant. "Public property" is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn't private it's stolen.
Gustave De Molinari
#45. Every writer's difficult journey is a movement from silence to speech. We must be intensely private and interior in order to find a voice and a vision - and we must bring our work to an outside world where the market, or public outrage, or even government censorship can destroy our voice.
Sara Paretsky
#46. We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process.
Ronald Reagan
#47. Most people seem unaware that corporate influence and wealth has taken over public policy, such that government policy now favors the wealthy few at the expense of the people.
Hank Johnson
#48. I have no faith in the USA corporate government systems of protection of public health and safety.
Steven Magee
#49. In response to our fast-food culture, a 'slow food' movement appeared. Out of hurried parenthood, a move toward slow parenting could be growing. With vital government supports for state-of-the-art public child care and paid parental leave, maybe we would be ready to try slow love and marriage.
Arlie Russell Hochschild
#50. A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#51. Americans cannot maintain their essential faith in government if there are two Americas, in which the private sector's work subsidizes the disproportionate benefits of this new public sector elite.
Mortimer Zuckerman
#52. You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.
Jon Stewart
#53. The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
Ludwig Von Mises
#54. 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
#55. None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealist Americans to public service that our citizens deserved and that our system of self-government demands.
Barack Obama
#56. Government is truly beginning to embrace the power of innovation for the people and by the people, the idea that if government collaborates openly with and unleashes the ingenuity of the public, it will get much more done, much faster and at much lower cost than if government acted alone.
Todd Park
#57. Chinese central government doesn't need to even lead public opinion: it just selectively stops censorship. In other words, just as censorship is a political tool, so is the absence of censorship.
Michael Anti
#58. Public-private leads to private-private, and soon you have the Circle running most or even all government services,
Dave Eggers
#59. I want to make sure we are presenting to the South Australian people a Government that is open and accountable. I want to make sure that we maintain public confidence in government at all levels.
Jay Weatherill
#60. Fossil fuel corporations are supposed to pay the government fair market royalties in exchange for the right to drill on public lands or in federal waters.
Bernie Sanders
#61. And how the government communicates about homeland security is central to how the public responds.
Patrick J. Kennedy
#62. Government should not tell you what to do unless there's a compelling public purpose.
Michael Bloomberg
#63. Violent video games played in public places are a tiny fraction of the media violence to which modern American children are exposed. Tiny - and judging from the record of this case not very violent compared to what is available to children on television and in movie theaters today.
Richard Posner
#64. [In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
James Madison
#65. China's critics rightly condemn the government for controlling public opinion in all sorts of ways, from imprisoning dissidents to censoring internet discussions. Yet the regime's obsession with control paradoxically means it pays close attention to public opinion.
Anonymous
#66. But politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channeling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups.
Robert Higgs
#67. Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen.
Grover Cleveland
#68. Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life.
Elmer Davis
#69. Negative personal attacks have no place in public life and serve to erode public confidence in our basic institutions of government.
Mike Pence
#70. The Reform Bill has destroyed the ancient conduits and strainers, and brings Public Opinion to act upon the government with the rapid, turbulent, and uncertain violence of a flood!
Robert Peel
#71. Anyone who believes in the essential role government can play in improving people's lives must also be the toughest critics of those who abuse the public trust.
Eric Schneiderman
#72. It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.
Alexander Hamilton
#73. Administrators are there because of the fans and the cricketers to run this game, so credibility of a game, or a board, or even a government for that matter, is important irrespective of what you do. If you are in public life, it is important.
Rahul Dravid
#74. Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles.
Ralph Raico
#75. These public-private partnerships are very, very dangerous. The most rotten part of the financial system in the US consisted of the government sponsored entities. They really kicked off this crisis. The state should set the rules and enforce them but not become involved as a market player.
George Soros
#76. Even before ObamaCare, the government took care of the bottom 5 or 10 percent of the public who were on Medicaid.
Rand Paul
#77. The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.
John Adams
#78. When there's a vacuum of public input, lobbyists usually fill it. But when there's public input, the people usually win.
Morgan Carroll
#79. There have been two periods in my lifetime when the excitement of government and of public issues drew to Washington many of the bright young people graduating from colleges and law schools. These were essentially the Roosevelt and the Kennedy years.
Katharine Graham
#80. Opinion pages have an impact on public debate, and they sometimes reveal things the government would rather have kept quiet.
Andrew Rosenthal
#82. I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it's going to be recorded and it goes to the government. I think the public can understand that.
Raymond Kelly
#83. I don't think that voters should be fixated on public policy. In a healthy republic, they wouldn't have to worry every waking hour about what their government is doing.
David Harsanyi
#84. I think the American public has gone from really almost white-hot anger in 2010 to an anxiety knowing their government needs to work.
Steny Hoyer
#85. 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
#86. There is nothing anyone can do anyway. The public has no power. The government knows I'm not a criminal. The parole board knows I'm not a criminal. The judge knows I'm not a criminal.
Jack Kevorkian
#87. The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life
Adolf Hitler
#89. These international bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.
Theodore Roosevelt
#90. Corporate America corrupted the watchdogs that were supposed to be guarding the public interest by feeding them under the table.
Arianna Huffington
#91. The natural proclivity of democratic governments is to pursue public policies which concentrate benefits on the well-organized and well-informed, and disperse the costs on the unorganized and ill-informed.
Peter Boettke
#92. Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion.
James F. Cooper
#93. We need a government which, yes, guarantees basic standards in public services, but which also steps in to protect people's wellbeing as they take part in our consumer democracy - particularly online.
David Blunkett
#94. I hope that the American public understands that we have three levels of government. We have the (unintelligible) the executive, but there's legislative and the judicial, and the legislative obviously need to be just doing their job.
Stockard Channing
#95. I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit.
James Madison
#96. The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.
Glenn Greenwald
#97. I think the public still isn't aware of the frequency with which the cyber-attacks, as they're being called in the press, are being used by governments around the world, not just the US.
Edward Snowden
#98. Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people's faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. Your ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.
Walter Cronkite
#99. If you think of global public goods like polio eradication, the kind of risk-taking new approach, philanthropy really does have a role to play there, because government doesn't do R&D about new things naturally as much as it probably should, and so philanthropy's there.
Bill Gates
#100. Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.
James Madison
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