Top 100 The Government Is Quotes
#1. If we don't learn from each others experience, we are forced to listen to people who have economic reasons to withhold critical information from us all. The other option is to wait for the government to tell us what their financial supporters want us to know.
Richard Diaz
#2. One of the hardest areas is duplication; everyone knows there's lots of duplication in government. But when you ask someone, 'OK, name two programs that are duplicative,' typically there's a long pause.
James Lankford
#3. Stronger than all the armies is an idea thats time has come ... The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!
Everett Dirksen
#4. Until you realize how easily it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else's game.
Evita Ochel
#5. The worst elements in Mexico are being pushed into the United States by the Mexican government. The Border Patrol knows this. Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border.
Donald Trump
#6. A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
Noah Webster
#7. All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.
Leo Tolstoy
#8. It is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of all constitutions, bills of rights and laws. This is the meaning of all struggles which men have fought for liberty.
Ludwig Von Mises
#9. In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#10. A lack of government oversight hasn't hindered the Internet. Quite the opposite. A hands-off approach is largely responsible for its fantastic growth and success.
Heather Brooke
#12. The task of the government is not only to pour honey into a cup, but sometimes to give bitter medicine.
Vladimir Putin
#14. I'm saying the federal government is taking away the freedom of Americans to make choices.
Paul LePage
#15. Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx-first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother.
Ronald Reagan
#16. We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.
Nelson Mandela
#17. The truth is, Hillary Clinton's ideas create more income inequality. Why? Because bigger government creates crony capitalism. When you have a 70,000 page tax code, you've got to be very wealthy, very powerful, very well connected to dig your way through that tax code.
Carly Fiorina
#18. Everybody in America has been dependent on the government at some time. We owe everybody in America the right to vote and access to capital. What I say is, let's make America work, let's make democracy and free enterprise work for everybody.
Andrew Young
#19. Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.
Grover Norquist
#20. Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life.
Elmer Davis
#21. Everybody in America is going to have to sacrifice to help us rebuild the Gulf Coast. Every government program, every individual, we are all going to have to sacrifice.
Tom Coburn
#22. The trial by jury is a trial by 'the country,' in contradistinction to a trial by the government. The jurors are drawn by lot from the mass of the people, for the very purpose of having all classes of minds and feelings, that prevail among the people at large, represented in the jury.
Lysander Spooner
#23. Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government.
Grover Norquist
#24. Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.
Milton Friedman
#25. Free speech is a restraint on government; not an incitement to the citizen.
David McCullough
#26. What the UN inspectors can do is demonstrate to the world, help the Iraqi government demonstrate to the world that the Iraqis are cooperatively disarming if that is in fact what the Iraqi government decides to do.
Douglas Feith
#27. The biggest problem confronting the country is our excessive spending. If we're not going to deal with it now, when are we going to deal with it? And we've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue.
Mitch McConnell
#28. Government exists to create and preserve conditions in which people can translate their ideas into practical reality. In the best of times, much is lost in translation. But we try.
Gerald R. Ford
#29. Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.
Harry Truman
#30. [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
#31. The government needs the help of industry. But the reality is companies will balance that against their own commercial interest in a very competitive market.
Michael Clarke Duncan
#33. That's why it has to be a nonprofit, because a nonprofit is required to take monies it receives and use them for the purposes for which it's chartered by the government. It can't be pocketed.
Mitch Kapor
#34. Virtually everything that the government does costs more than when the same thing is done in private industry - whether it is building housing, running prisons, collecting garbage, or innumerable other things. Why in the world would we imagine that health care would be the exception?
Thomas Sowell
#35. The war on drugs was an ideology the government came up with, and there never really was a war on drugs. I mean, to stop the importation of drugs into the United States of America is an impossibility.
George Jung
#36. Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.
Beverley Baxter
#37. The key to making the inspections work is the Iraqi government making the crucial decision that because of the international pressure Iraq has to disarm itself.
Douglas Feith
#38. I had to watch government fail for 25 years doing consumer reporting before I really saw it because intuitively, the reaction is problem, bring government and government will make it better.
John Stossel
#39. So why was I so scared? Because crime is something relative; it's something the government defines and redefines whenever it pleases.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
#40. The present government is very insistent that business sponsorship should replace government sponsorship of the arts. Business sponsorship won't happen unless you make tax concessions, which they won't.
Peter Maxwell Davies
#41. At the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God and a belief that government should replace God.
Todd Akin
#42. The shadow that comes with postmodernism is a profound self-involvement. We lose all perspective on the collective endeavors that have made the extraordinarily lives we live possible.
James M. Fallows
#43. Iran's strong logic and firm diplomacy is the guideline for all government officials in negotiations on country's peaceful nuclear program with foreigners, quite resolutely.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
#44. The highest percentage of respondents say that biggest problem in the country is the government. The biggest problem facing our country today is that our government is terrible. Dissatisfaction with the government, problem numero uno by a mile.
Rachel Maddow
#45. Military activities (are) not a role for the United States. There needs to be a number of steps that Maliki and his government must take to demonstrate that he is committed to an inclusive Iraq, something he has not done up to date.
Hillary Clinton
#46. It is an ambassador's duty to stand up for his nation's foreign policy in any era and under any government whatsoever. Ambassadors are, in the full meaning of the term, titled spies.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#47. Our whole system of government is based on "We the people," but if we the people don't pay attention to what's going on, we have no right to bellyache or squawk when things go wrong.
Ronald Reagan
#48. Government should allow people to go out and do the things Americans have always done, create jobs and prosperity. And America's role in the world - the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest country in the world.
Marco Rubio
#50. Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into.
Lee Child
#51. Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.
B.R. Ambedkar
#52. You have to have a government that does give both money and energy to function in a leadership role modeling giving for the people. Government is supposed to lead by example in many cases.
Maya Soetoro-Ng
#53. See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.
Dave Barry
#54. Let's face it: we live at a time when government is less and less powerful, less and less effective, and the agent of social change, at least for the immediate future, is the corporation.
Tibor Kalman
#55. The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.
Lester R. Brown
#56. Secrecy is for losers ... It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most persuasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
#57. The stagnation of the Japanese economy in the past 20 years is eloquent testimony to the fact that government usually gets it wrong. Sometimes it makes the wrong decision because it fails to anticipate the market (as Japan did when it downplayed laptop computers and stressed mainframes).
Dick Morris
#58. So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.
Carol Moseley Braun
#60. The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.
[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]
James Madison
#61. The position the Government finds itself in is not one of constructing a law, but of carrying out a decision given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Charles Tupper
#62. Vietnam is often called our only uncensored war, but that only means that the government wasn't vetting the pictures and words.
Bruce Jackson
#63. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#64. There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.
Winston Churchill
#65. When the private sector fails, the solution is more government. When the government fails, the solution is more government.
Glenn Reynolds
#66. And the other issue is Gore, $4.6 trillion - the single largest expansion of government in American history, from universal preschool, now, to prescriptions to health care - it is Socialism 101.
Sean Hannity
#67. Autocracy is a government of the few from above; Bolshevism is a government of the few from below.
Ameen Rihani
#68. Capitalists desire purchasing power. Socialists lust for the power to plan society. Which is worse?
A.E. Samaan
#69. The constitution of England is not a paper constitution. It is an aggregate of institutions, many of them founded merely upon prescription, some of them fortified by muniments, but all of them the fruit and experience of an ancient and illustrious people.
Benjamin Disraeli
#70. Conservatives need to know how important it is to fill out the census. It is one of the only things our Constitution specifically asks of U.S. citizens and boycotting will just help liberals expand government even further.
Patrick McHenry
#71. No government body is more notorious for over-legislation than the Department of Trade and Industry.
Charles Kennedy
#72. Nothing is more striking to an European traveller in the United States than the absence of what we term the Government, or the Administration.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#73. I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do.
Christopher Bond
#74. A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people, but those of multinational corporations.
Suzy Kassem
#75. The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government.
Ron Suskind
#76. Do you remember back when you felt you could actually do something to make the world better?" "You're talking to the wrong man. I work for central government, remember? Actually doing something is the mistake we're trained to avoid.
Chris Cleave
#77. The little I know of it has not served to raise my opinion of what is vulgarly called the Monied Interest; I mean, that blood-sucker, that muckworm, that calls itself the friend of government.
William Pitt, 1st Earl Of Chatham
#78. Success is created in studio apartments and garages, at kitchen tables, and in classrooms across the nation, not in government conference rooms in Washington.
Tim Scott
#79. Philanthropy, although it's tiny compared to the government, it's 2% of the US economy, which is the largest percentage, other than the Middle East.
Bill Gates
#80. The opposite of Nazi is neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative or liberal. Totalitarianism's diametric opposite of is Libertarianism.
A.E. Samaan
#81. The administrative control of the government remains everywhere. You can't have a government within the country and not have control over everything that's happening in the country ... Even in the Election Commission there is some extent of administrative control.
Salman Khurshid
#82. I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.
Madeleine Albright
#83. The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.
Georg Buchner
#84. I want to make it clear as Premier and as local member that I strongly support the Renewable Energy Target. Our message to the Federal Government and to Canberra is stick to the Renewable Energy Target.
Denis Napthine
#85. Democracy ... .[is not] ... simply a form of government but an organizing principle that bundles individual freedoms, Christianity, and capitalism into a marketable product carrying with it the unexamined promise of wealth and prosperity.
Thomas King
#86. If there's one thing I'm not going to apologise for as the leader of the Liberal Democrats in government after 60 or 70 years of being out of government, it's that you just cannot avoid but deal with the world the way it is.
Nick Clegg
#87. Surveillance is surveillance. I can never understand why some people think it matters whether it's the government doing it to you or a company.
Ken Liu
#88. 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
#89. Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.
Harry Browne
#90. It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.
George Bernard Shaw
#91. The wicked cry out,
"We are oppressed!"
when the law is set out.
The righteous rejoice,
"We are blessed!"
when a king serves God
according to His law.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#92. The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition ... is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.
Adam Smith
#93. We Brits print banknotes out in Debden in Essex, and have contracted it out to the private sector. Here in the U.S. it is a government operation right in the heart of Washington next door to the Holocaust Museum.
Evan Davis
#94. When Johnny didn't answer, the Don went on. Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. Never forget that.
Mario Puzo
#95. A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#96. I think it is important the communities are listened to and that their voice is heard, particularly with local government boundaries more than parliamentary boundaries, because you are talking very much about communities. It can be a very emotive thing.
Nicola Sturgeon
#97. One third of the land in the United States is owned by the government.
Na
#98. The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.
Bella Abzug
#99. I'm going to give away a lot more than half my money. I'd be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I'm giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.
Ray Dalio
#100. Poor man! You have many burdens on you: The burdens of your religion, of your culture, of your ignorance, of your oppressive government! Find a wild horse and watch it! You will see what is to be unburdened and free!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
