Quotes About Presidential Government

#1. Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.

Walter Bagehot

#2. After Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, I was heartened to see him issue an Open Government Initiative on his first full day in office.

Jesse Ventura

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

Lyndon B. Johnson

#4. No higher proof exists of the strength of popular government than, though the chosen of the people be struck down, his constitutional successor is peacefully installed without shock or strain.

Chester A. Arthur

#5. In 2006, I entered the presidential palace in the main square of La Paz as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Our government, under the slogan 'Bolivia Changes,' is committed to ending the colonialism, racism and exclusion that many of our people lived under for many centuries.

Evo Morales

#6. The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.

James Madison

#7. I would not be the mere President of a Party. I feel bound to administer the government untrammeled by party schemes.

Zachary Taylor

#8. The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth.

Herbert Hoover

#9. This week, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the Yemeni government, heretofore pro-American. In September, they overran Sanaa, the capital. On Tuesday, they seized the presidential palace. On Thursday, they forced the president to resign.

Charles Krauthammer

#10. The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital ... if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today.

William Henry Harrison

#11. Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.

Ronald Reagan

#12. Every election, a presidential candidate inevitably proposes a new cabinet agency. The idea is that this is the only way to solve a particular problem. Just create more government.

Christopher Buckley

#13. We must not be misled by the claim that the source of all wisdom is in the government.

Herbert Hoover

#14. Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the Federal Government, are of high importance.

Andrew Jackson

#15. Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.

David Mamet

#16. Our forms of government - though both cast in the democratic pattern - are greatly different. Indeed, sometimes it appears that many of our misunderstandings spring from an imperfect knowledge on the part of both of us of the dissimilarities in our forms of government.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#17. Freedom requires that government keep the channels of competition and opportunity open, prevent monopolies, economic abuse and domination.

Herbert Hoover

#18. We the people tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us.

Ronald Reagan

#19. In case anyone in America had missed the utter helplessness of their government, 4,000 British troops captured and burned Washington DC. The Presidential mansion, where the decision for war had been taken, was one of the public buildings to be torched.

Andrew D. Lambert

#20. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.

Ronald Reagan

#21. A decent and manly examination of the acts of government should not only be tolerated, but encouraged.

William Henry Harrison

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

Herbert Hoover

#23. Certain documents, such as the FISA court order allowing collection of telephone records and Obama's presidential directive to prepare offensive cyber-operations, were among the US government's most closely held secrets. Deciphering the archive and the NSA's language

Glenn Greenwald

#24. I have seen in many places housing which has been developed under government influences, but I have never seen any projects in which governments have played their part which have fountains and statues and grass and trees, which are as important to the concept of the home as the roof itself.

John F. Kennedy

#25. We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth.

Ronald Reagan

#26. The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha".

David Pietrusza

#27. My particular historical vantage point is a product of my upbringing as that odd duck, a native Washingtonian whose parents were not in government. The first presidential transition of my sentient lifetime, Kennedy's, I remember vividly.

Frank Rich

#28. I welcome the signing by the presidential candidates Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Dr. Ashraf Ghani of an agreement on the formation of a government of national unity in Afghanistan,

Anders Fogh Rasmussen

#29. During his runs for the GOP presidential nomination, Mitt Romney has done a good job of mimicking Reagan's anti-government diatribes and 'better days ahead' rhetoric.

Jackson Katz

#30. Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]

Noam Chomsky

#31. God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.

Millard Fillmore

#32. When you think about a presidential candidate spending all of his or her time talking to that tiny, tiny fraction of us who have the capacity to fund political elections, it's obvious why the perspective of government is skewed relative to what most Americans care about.

Lawrence Lessig

#33. Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve 'tax breaks,' which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money.

Dave Barry

#34. I am proud of my part in the creation of this new state. Our Government was the first to recognize the State of Israel.

Harry S. Truman

#35. Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.

Ronald Reagan

#36. When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

John W. Gardner