Top 100 Quotes About Government
#1. Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
Ludwig Von Mises
#2. The American people deserve a blueprint for policymaking that is built upon the Constitution of the United States and the principles of fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense.
Jason Chaffetz
#3. Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
James Madison
#4. I have lived by one crucial principle since I was 24 years old. I don't blame or complain about things like the economy, the government, taxes, employees, gas prices, or any of the external things that I don't have control over. The only thing I have control over is my response to these things.
Jack Canfield
#5. This Government has found occasion to express, in a friendly spirit, but with much earnestness, to the Government of the Czar, its serious concern because of the harsh measures now being enforced against the Hebrews in Russia.
Benjamin Harrison
#6. Prior to the PATRIOT Act, the ability of government agencies to share information with each other was limited, which kept investigators from fully understanding what terrorists might be planning and to prevent their attacks.
Chris Chocola
#7. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist.
Joe Biden
#8. He's a lovely guy, but there's no spark between us whatsoever. It just goes to show, that even with all their fancy assessment tools, the government can't legislate for chemistry.
Siobhan Davis
#9. Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.
Margaret Thatcher
#10. Aristocracy is that form of government in which education and discipline are qualifications for suffrage and office holding.
Aristotle.
#11. The character and fight against fascism moved centre stage when, in 1936, Franco attempted to overthrow by force the Popular Front Government of Republican Spain.
Bill Alexander
#12. We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government
a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.
Gerald R. Ford
#13. You can be bound by physical things, as I am by certain sicknesses, but nevertheless you can still be free to recognize that all initiatives really come from yourself if you don't depend upon structures of government or structures of any kind.
George Woodcock
#14. Because government has tremendous power, it attracts people who are eager to game the system, obtaining by force of law what they could never achieve through consensus.
William A. Dembski
#15. Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't Nanny tell you what to do?
Mark Steyn
#16. Terrorism can go anywhere where there is not strong government, or government that cannot control its hinterlands.
Robert D. Kaplan
#17. And as far as doing God's work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.
Maureen Dowd
#18. If liberal government was to be saved, [the British people of 1940] would have to be the ones to save it.
Brooke C. Stoddard
#19. We must not allow the practices of an anti-democratic State that abuses the powers of government to violate the human rights of Venezuelans.
Leopoldo Lopez
#20. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Frederic Bastiat
#21. We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstandin g and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.
Ramsey Clark
#22. The idea that government can instruct private enterprise on how to eliminate waste is preposterous.
James Cook
#23. You know, Republicans should have a consistent philosophy. And if your philosophy is about limited government and not intruding in people's lives, you shouldn't just inconveniently take a social issue like gay marriage and say, 'Well, unless we think - actually we should be intruding your life.'
Mark McKinnon
#24. The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.
Rand Paul
#25. All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.
Murray Rothbard
#26. One thing I learned, with permission of the school committee of Indianapolis, was that when a tyrant or a government gets in trouble it wonders what to do. Declare war! Then nothing else matters. It's like chess; when in doubt, castle.
Kurt Vonnegut
#27. For 70 years there's been a consensus among scholars and the American people on a reading to the Constitution that protects the right of privacy, the autonomy of individuals, while at the same time empowering the federal government to protect the less powerful.
Joe Biden
#28. Once a person comes to rely on the government for support, that person becomes a socialist through and through.
James Cook
#29. We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams.
Francisco Franco
#30. It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.
William Pfaff
#31. Nationalism, coupled with great faith in the power of the government to enact domestic bargains between labor and capital, has been seen before: it was called fascism then.
Raghuram G. Rajan
#32. The government considers the aborting of innocent unborn children a natural right. Yet, there is widespread debate still about whether the death penalty for convicted murderers is "cruel and unusual punishment."
Joseph Farah
#33. Our spending priorities are clearly in question when we are increasing bond indebtedness on pet projects such as museums while our infrastructure is allegedly failing. Mississippians are spending more on basic needs than ever. They don't need their state government making that worse.
Chris McDaniel
#34. Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government had the power to issue commands to the several sovereign states, but it had no authority to govern individuals directly.
David Souter
#35. One benefit of government work? Frequent flyer miles. Seriously, I get bumped up about every flight. Still not as nice as the director's private jet though...
Nathan Edmondson
#36. The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.
Theodore Roosevelt
#37. Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.
Ai Weiwei
#38. The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.
Maximilien De Robespierre
#39. It saddens me when public officials and bureaucrats are criticized for ulterior motives, none of which I have ever found in a government bureaucrat, or when someone personalizes disagreements.
Michael K. Powell
#40. When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long.
Ronald Reagan
#41. The government are considering spending £3million on a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher when she dies. For £3million they could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we'll dig a hole deep enough to deliver her to Satan ourselves.
Frankie Boyle
#42. Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular.
Jill Lepore
#43. What you are inferring is, If we were to legalise heroin tomorrow everybody would use heroin. How many people here would start using heroin? I bet nobody would. Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don't want to use heroin, so I need these laws.
Ron Paul
#44. The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
H.L. Mencken
#45. Whenever I tour my district and I ask small businesspeople 'what can I do to help?,' they tell me to just get government out of the way and they'll create the jobs and grow on their own.
Diane Black
#46. In Washington, we've seen enough tax hikes, government takeovers, bailouts, and other big government solutions under Speaker Pelosi's control.
Kevin McCarthy
#47. We should always measure a government's environmental rhetoric against its environmental record
John Key
#48. 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
#49. Excessive administration secrecy ... feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public's confidence in government.
John McCain
#50. What did I hope to gain from my game and from putting my parents through all this? The truth is that I loved to play. My body was fit and my mind raring to go. But I also hoped that I would get a government job through the sports quota.
M.C. Mary Kom
#51. A Patriot is someone who stands for his country always, and for his government when it is deserved.
Mark Twain
#52. Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.
Bernard DeVoto
#53. At the end of the day, philanthropy can only ever be an adjunct to what governments provide. And government coffers need to be replenished.
Noreena Hertz
#54. Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.
Lyn Nofziger
#55. People are really upside down. They want a government they can trust. They want one that's not going to raise their taxes by $15 billion and not lay off one state employee.
Carl Paladino
#56. We build schools and give government loans and grants to college kids; for those of us who are parents, tuition will often be the last big subsidy we give the children we've raised.
Bill McKibben
#57. Hollywood's martyr-mythology leaves out the fact that the famed Hollywood Ten, for example, were in fact members of the Communist Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in violation of the Smith Act and which took orders directly from Moscow.
Jonah Goldberg
#58. As politicians know all too well, even a Government that does not represent the wishes of a people can count on their support once the nation is locked in conflict with an external foe.
Elisabeth Hoemberg
#59. Ugh!' snarled the Wolf, as he limped through the brushwood with his tail between his legs, 'this is perfectly monstrous weather. Why doesn't the Government look to it?
Oscar Wilde
#60. After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.
Calvin Coolidge
#61. Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it.
Meg Whitman
#62. For the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.
Henry David Thoreau
#63. There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.
Bill Gates
#64. I think you should use whatever power you have to try to help people who need your help. Then we'd all be happy. Instead there's this bizarre notion the government propounds that we should all run around selfishly acquiring money. I just don't understand that.
Clive Stafford Smith
#65. Let them write angry letters to the Government-
they haven't been loved enough, there has been some crime
Joyce Carol Oates
#66. The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.
James F. Cooper
#67. Look at the Justice Department, it's full of Jews ... The lawyers in government are damn Jews.
Richard M. Nixon
#68. The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11 only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger.
Jurgen Habermas
#69. China is building a model for how an authoritarian government can survive the Internet.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#70. In Africa, there is much confusion ... Before, there was no radio, or other forms of communication ... Now, in Africa ... the government talks, people talk, the police talk, the people don't know anymore. They aren't free.
Youssou N'Dour
#71. How do you 'invest in the future'? By borrowing $188 million every hour. That's what the Government of the United States is doing. It's spending one-fifth of a billion dollars it doesn't have every hour of every day of every week - all for your future!
Mark Steyn
#72. Some information has to remain in the privy of the office of the Prime Minister and the ministers for the proper administration of government.
Jean Chretien
#73. Uncertainty is normal in the first few days of a new government.
Victor Ponta
#74. It is the English, not their Government; for if they were not blind cowards, they would lynch Chamberlain and Halifax and all the other smarmy traitors.
Enoch Powell
#75. When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.
Harry A. Blackmun
#76. I am struggling to maintain the government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to prevent others from overthrowing it.
Abraham Lincoln
#77. The 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities.
Harrison Schmitt
#78. 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
#79. Mitt Romney knows America's prosperity didn't happen because our government simply spent more. It happened because our people used their own money to open a business.
Marco Rubio
#80. The uses of government should be to foster, protect and promote the possession of equality.
Victoria Woodhull
#81. Elections do have consequences, and those we elect and far too often re-elect have forgotten how government works and for whom they work for, and that an ever growing, power hungry state and federal government are not the answer to the problem, but 80% of the time are the problem.
David Pratt
#82. A government which is not liked by the artists is certainly a bad government, because artist sees very well what is behind the masks!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#83. If obedience is not rendered in the homes, we shall never have a whole city, country, principality, or kingdom well governed. For this order in the homes is the first rule; it is the source of all other rule and government.
Martin Luther
#84. 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
#85. I believe Money is too important to leave in the hands of government officials.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
#86. Research and development needs permanent tax credits to build the technology that spurs our growth. But no government programs alone can get America's students to study more science and math; parents must push and help their children to meet this goal.
Ernest Istook
#87. Some Iraqi troops aren't willing to fight for their government. But many Shiites appear willing to fight for their religious leaders.
Richard Engel
#88. What we see in a democracy governed by "representatives" is not a government "for the people" but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the setting up of unstable balances of power.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
#89. 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
#90. Obviously, every dictator pays a great deal of attention to who is running the army. There's always a base right outside the capitol to protect the head of government.
Elliott Abrams
#91. In summary, the Romans were opposed to tyranny in any form; and the feature of government to which they gave the most thought was an elaborate system of checks and balances.
Robert W. Welch Jr.
#92. They should set a very clear priority for the government. There is such a large penumbra of issues. The party needs to come to grips with the reality that it has to be coherent politically.
Mahesh Rangarajan
#93. Law is justice. In this proposition a simple and enduring government can be conceived. And I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice.
Frederic Bastiat
#94. The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
Thomas Paine
#95. A woman does not have to make decisions based on the need to survive. She can cut through issues, call shots as she sees them ... Many bad decisions are made by men in government because it is good for them personally to make bad public decisions.
Dianne Feinstein
#97. When we speak of "gods," we are really talking about "the opinions of priests." When we speak of "the government," we really mean "the violence of a tiny minority.
Stefan Molyneux
#98. Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#99. I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.
George Bernard Shaw
#100. The fundamental purpose of government is to protect its citizens.
Arlen Specter
