Top 100 Quotes About Governments
#1. Terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, in my eyes I have a very, very, very simple explanation. Gangs of criminals, killers, used unfortunately by certain governments in the past for political purposes, who are on their own now as gangs.
Hamid Karzai
#2. It [economics] facilitates our understanding of the well-being of societies and the challenges they face; it explains many of the daily interactions between individuals, companies and governments, and it offers a guide to understanding political and social trends that are shaping our world.
Greg Ip
#3. All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion ; and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life.
James Russell Lowell
#4. Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.
Irwin Winkler
#5. The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments.
Donald Rumsfeld
#6. Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police.
A character's response to a discussion about eating from the tree of knowledge.
Alasdair Gray
#7. Obama's Democrats have become the part of no. Real cuts to federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell no.
Charles Krauthammer
#8. The stability of modern governments above the ancient, and the accuracy of modern philosophy, have improved, and probably will still improve, by similar gradations.
David Hume
#9. War ... strengthened the position of the armament industries ... to a point ... that these industries dominated the economies and therefore the governments of all the participating nations ... war barbarised and lowered the already very low level of accepted conduct.
Doris Lessing
#10. The biggest challenge is always the governments - they try to stop all good things. I try to stay away from them as much as I can, as I know if someone can destroy something good, it's the government.
Manoj Bhargava
#11. [You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments: Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights, derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.
John Adams
#12. It is all too evident that our nation, and the governments of other countries, require all the help they can get in order to fight the War on Terrorism against people who have no qualms about taking the lives of innocent men, women, and children.
Jim Sensenbrenner
#13. It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don't riot when oil prices rise.
Robert Kiyosaki
#14. Well they have an input into policy but in the end governments are elected to put together policy but the good thing about the Wentworth Group is that you know you've got 11 pretty capable people with a lot of good ideas.
John Anderson
#15. I think that the best hope for peace and prosperity in the world is greater cooperation among nations, which in turn will be produced if both our governments and the people of our countries travel more and get to know each other better.
David Rockefeller
#16. We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
Bertolt Brecht
#17. Put not your trust in the princes of this world, for they will frig thee up and so shalt their governments, even unto the end of the earth.
Stephen King
#18. Each and every day around the world, display wars are taking place as governments, multinational corporations, criminals, and terrorists battle to shape and control what is seen online. What ensues is a real but covert war on reality, one that is meant to blind us to the truth.
Marc Goodman
#19. Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
Barbara Tuchman
#20. On the streets of Moscow, looking into thousands of faces, I was reminded once again that it's not people who make war, but governments - and people deserve governments that fight for peace in the nuclear age.
Ronald Reagan
#21. Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.
Jaron Lanier
#22. Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.
Andrew Jackson
#23. The reason societies with democratic governments are better places to live in than their alternatives isn't because of some goodness intrinsic to democracy, but because its hopeless inefficiency helps blunt the basic potential for evil.
Nathan Myhrvold
#24. Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
Plato
#25. Is this how governments are made? Forcing decisions on wounded people in the middle of the night?
Robert Jackson Bennett
#26. The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
Thomas Babington Macaulay
#28. Rights are something made up by governments to make you feel like you're buying something with your taxes.
Stefan Molyneux
#29. The two-way street of Total Information Awareness is the road that leads to a more transparent and complete picture of ourselves, our governments, and our world.
Newton Lee
#30. There is no doubt that the world economy is in trouble. But if governments or individuals use this as an excuse to reduce assistance to the world's poorest people, they will only multiply the seriousness of the problem for the world as a whole.
Peter Singer
#31. I think governments are the cancer of civilization.
Chuck D
#32. The world is changing. People do not exist to serve their governments or their kings. Governments exist to serve the people, so the people should have a say in those governments.
Brian McClellan
#33. SETI is probably the most important quest of our time , and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently.
Arthur C. Clarke
#34. We are moving into a world of unaccountable and secretive corporations that manage all our communications and work hand in hand with governments to make us visible to them. Our privacy is being strip-mined and hoarded.
Rebecca Solnit
#35. There is enough oil in the ground to deep-fry the lot of us, and no obvious means to prevail upon governments and industry to leave it in the ground.
George Monbiot
#36. All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire.
Vilfredo Pareto
#37. The world's governments have many classified layers and outsiders rarely gain access to their hidden secrets. And certainly no common man can get confirmation of the existence of exotic technologies.
Takaaki Musha
#38. Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
Robert M. Pirsig
#39. When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
#40. Even the government understands that the environmental challenge is so big that no single agency can handle it. It needs collaboration among all the stakeholders - companies, governments, NGOs and the public. Public accountability will be the ultimate driving force.
Ma Jun
#41. When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new.
George Bernard Shaw
#42. Governments must give to all those who have hit life's hurdles the chance to rebuild and have a future.
Pauline Hanson
#43. During the Cold War, the U.S. instituted a policy of sending money to governments in poor countries to buy their political loyalty. While studies show that sending aid to foreign governments creates allegiance, it does not lead to economic progress.
Iqbal Quadir
#44. Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.
[On Water]
Guy De Maupassant
#45. The government of heaven, if wickedly administered, would become one of the worst governments upon the face of the earth. No matter how good a government is, unless it is administered by righteous men, an evil government will be made of it.
Brigham Young
#46. Those of us born into vitalist and expressionist cultures must hope that governments will draw back from shutting down the modernist project of exploring, experimenting, and imagining - of voyaging into the unknown - that has been essential for rewarding lives.
Edmund Phelps
#47. I confess that neither the structure of the languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.
Mary Shelley
#48. To me, one of the proofs that there is a moral governance in the universe is the fact that when people and governments work intelligently and far-sightedly for the good of others, they achieve their own prosperity, too.
Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth
#49. 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
#50. Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.
Ivan Krastev
#51. The biggest enemy of western people is not war or terrorism, it is their own governments lack of regulation of public health and safety.
Steven Magee
#52. One of the main lessons I have learned during my five years as Secretary-General is that broad partnerships are the key to solving broad challenges. When governments, the United Nations, businesses, philanthropies and civil society work hand-in-hand, we can achieve great things.
Ban Ki-moon
#53. The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.
Susan Sontag
#54. The word "rights", is something that governments need to provide you and protect you from but, the governments are the basic violators of all human rights.
Stefan Molyneux
#55. People are used to getting a lot of information quickly, and they're used to being quite empowered as consumers, and they go to governments expecting a similar treatment; they want to find data and they want to influence events quickly, and yet they come into this brick wall.
Heather Brooke
#56. Snowden's itinerary does, however, seem to bear the fingerprints of Julian Assange. Assange was often quick to criticise the US and other western nations when they abused human rights. But he was reluctant to speak out against governments that supported his personal efforts to avoid extradition.
Luke Harding
#57. When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience.
John Pilger
#58. Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future.
P.D. James
#59. It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control.
Howard Zinn
#60. I fully understand the expectations of the state governments. Thus, I am better placed to work closely with the chief ministers.
Narendra Modi
#61. So long as the international community consists of sovereign states, war between them remains a possibility, of which all governments have to take reasonable account.
Michael Howard
#62. There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#63. People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.
Alan Moore
#64. Well managed and healthy oceans are vital to the survival of small island states, such as the Maldives. This important book shows how scientists and governments can better protect the world's oceans.
Mohamed Nasheed
#65. Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
Jonathan Sacks
#66. A monarchy conducted with infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence is the most perfect of all possible governments.
Ezra Stiles
#67. Governments have absolutely no interest in self-reliance. It defeats one of the purposes for their existence. They encourage and thrive on dependency. The more of it they sell, the more necessary they are, and the more power and money they need.
Dan Groat
#68. Everyone knows that the Zionist regime is a tool in the hands of the United States and British governments.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
#69. The most destructive thing governments do is divide people against each other, all in competition over the reins of the state.
Anthony Gregory
#70. Consumers, unlike voters, expect an immediate response to their concerns; and companies, unlike governments, do not have the luxury of a mid-term lull.
Noreena Hertz
#71. Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The marketing immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.
Jean Baudrillard
#72. Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#73. As for politics, I'm an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can't stand caged animals. People must be free.
Charlie Chaplin
#74. It does not matter what country we live in, who our leaders are, or even who we are. Because we are human, we therefore have rights. And because we have rights, governments are bound to protect them.
Hillary Clinton
#75. So in a sense, that little war in the Levant had a horrendous effect in terms of the stability of countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, over the long term. Because once again, it proved to Muslims that their governments couldn't protect them and would side with the enemy.
Michael Scheuer
#76. Governments are like underwear. They start smelling pretty bad if you don't change them once in a while.
Margaret Murray
#77. All Governments rest mainly on public opinion, and to that of his own subjects every wise Sovereign will look. The opinion of his subjects will force a Sovereign to do his duty, and by that opinion will he be exalted or depressed in the politics of the world.
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon
#78. Many governments are quick to condemn Assad, but a dwindling number of them would celebrate a rebel victory in Damascus.
Richard Engel
#79. It is no accident that I mention our American friends, as they are always influencing our relations with our neighbors either directly or behind the scenes. Sometimes you don't even know who to talk to - the governments of certain countries or directly to their American patrons,
Vladimir Putin
#80. There is no country on Earth where Internet and telecommunications companies do not face at least some pressure from governments to do things that would potentially infringe on users' rights to free expression and privacy.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#81. The day will come when the people will make so insistent their demand that there be peace in the world that the Governments will get out of the way and let them have peace.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#82. The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.
John Quincy Adams
#83. The Clintons are perhaps the most politically sophisticated public figures of their generation. They know how things work in the corridors of power and around the world; they know that foreign governments are trying to
Peter Schweizer
#84. I think that American presidents, that position in itself, as well as American foreign policy, it has terrorism in it. CIA agents going to overthrow certain governments - they're using terrorist tactics. They're not going in there like, 'Hey, you wanna have some cake?'
Lupe Fiasco
#85. It is of the greatest importance that people and governments in many more countries than ours should realize that it is more dangerous to have access to nuclear arms than not to possess them.
Alva Myrdal
#86. In fact, after having abolished the monarchy, the best of all governments, [the French Revolution] had transferred all the public power to the people - the people ... ever easy to deceive and to lead into every excess
Pope Pius VI
#87. After September 11, the European governments have completely failed. They are incapable of seeing beyond their own national scope of interests.
Jurgen Habermas
#88. What poetry does above all else is develop sensibility. And that's what makes poetry so dangerous. That's why poetry is so good at undermining governments and so bad at building them. There's nothing harder to organize than a group of poets.
Sam Hamill
#89. For governments at war, the media is an instrument of war or an element in war that is to be controlled.
Bruce Jackson
#90. There is no greater responsibility resting upon peoples and governments everywhere than to make sure that enduring peace will this time - at long last - be established and maintained.
Cordell Hull
#91. I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.
Richard McKenna
#92. 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
#93. Governments come and go. Life is the only movement that keeps going,' he
Antoine Laurain
#94. Climate change is such a huge issue that it requires strong, concerted, consistent and enduring action by governments.
Peter Garrett
#95. Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.
Jonathan Sacks
#96. None but a people advanced to a high state of moral and intellectual excellence are capable in a civilized condition of forming and maintaining free governments, and among those who are so far advanced, very few indeed have had the good fortune to form constitutions capable of endurance.
John C. Calhoun
#97. One of the hardest lessons in young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.
Terry Pratchett
#98. Since all human governments, like all human individuals, are subject to temptation, especially the temptation to use this God-given role for their own ends, there must be clear and wise critique, and holding to account.
N. T. Wright
#99. The greatest fears that governments have are freedom of speech and exposing the corruptness, the ineptitude, and the double dealing going on that they don't want the public knowing about.
Gerald Celente
#100. Remarkably, governments are beginning to embrace the idea that nothing enhances democracy more than giving voice and information to everybody in the country. Why not open their books if they have nothing to hide?
Mo Ibrahim
