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A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
– Amos Bronson Alcott
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A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
– Edward Abbey
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Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
– Lord Acton
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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
– Lord Acton
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It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
– Ansel Adams
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The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
– John Adams
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While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.
– John Adams
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While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.
– Madeleine Albright
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Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.
– Steve Allen
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I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.
– Woody Allen
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In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
– Saint Augustine
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The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.
– Diane Abbott
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The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
– Otto von Bismarck
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Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.
– Hugo Black
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It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose.
– Tony Blair
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I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven't had any moral compass, who've just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they're losers.
– Michael Bloomberg
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I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.
– Napoleon Bonaparte
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Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
– Jorge Luis Borges
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Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to create rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
– William J. Brennan, Jr.
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The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment.
– William Jennings Bryan
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The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
– William F. Buckley, Jr.
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All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
– Edmund Burke
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Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.
– George W. Bush
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Government is necessary for our survival. We need government in order to survive. The Founding Fathers created a special place for government. It is called the Constitution.
– Michael Badnarik
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Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.
– Harry Browne
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The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.
– John C. Calhoun
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By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
– Albert Camus
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If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
– Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort
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Good government is the outcome of private virtue.
– John Jay Chapman
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Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
– G. K. Chesterton
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The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
– Sir Winston Churchill
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I don't believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I have changed government policy solely because of a contribution.
– Bill Clinton
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An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
– Confucius
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He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.
– Confucius
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Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.
– Charles Horton Cooley
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The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.
– Calvin Coolidge
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Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words abortion or tax hikes pass their lips.
– Ann Coulter
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Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
– Norman Cousins
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There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.
– Stokely Carmichael
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Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral.
– Hugo Chavez
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Look at our Lords disciples. One denied Him; one doubted Him; one betrayed Him. If our Lord couldn't have perfection, how are you going to have it in city government?
– Richard J. Daley
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Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards, commissions, and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time, money, and energy far beyond any real contribution they make.
– Mitch Daniels
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Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
– Denis Diderot
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Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
– Denis Diderot
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The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
– William O. Douglas
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Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.
– Dale Dauten
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The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect.
– Sam Ewing
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A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
– Gerald R. Ford
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Truth is the glue that holds government together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.
– Gerald R. Ford
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No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
– Anatole France
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Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
– Benjamin Franklin
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There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
– Benjamin Franklin
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Governments never learn. Only people learn.
– Milton Friedman
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Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
– Milton Friedman
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The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
– Milton Friedman
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The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes.
– Milton Friedman
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Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.
– Larry Flynt
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Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
– John Kenneth Galbraith
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It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
– John Kenneth Galbraith
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It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.
– William E. Gladstone
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The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
– Barry M. Goldwater
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The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians.
– Geronimo
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A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity.
– George Grenville
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People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income.
– Robert Half
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Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
– Alexander Hamilton
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First of all, I can't forget my first responsibility - which is to be the Leader of the Opposition and that's to provide an alternative government.
– Stephen Harper
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I do not intend to dispute in any way the need for defence cuts and the need for government spending cuts in general. ... I do not share a not in my backyard approach to government spending reductions.
– Stephen Harper
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I don't believe an Alliance government should sponsor legislation on abortion or a referendum on abortion.
– Stephen Harper
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If you want to be a government in a minority Parliament, you have to work with other people.
– Stephen Harper
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It's the government's obligation to look really to the third parties to get the support to govern.
– Stephen Harper
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The government can only be brought down because it alienates several parties in the House.
– Stephen Harper
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The Leader of the Opposition's constitutional obligation - the obligation to Parliament - it's the reason we did the merger! - is to make sure Canadians have an alternative for government.
– Stephen Harper
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We have in this country a federal government that increasingly is engaged in trying to determine which business, which regions, which industries will succeed, which will not through a whole range of economic development, regional development corporate subsidization programs.
– Stephen Harper
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We should have been there shoulder to shoulder with our allies. Our concern is the instability of our government as an ally. We are playing again with national and global security matters.
– Stephen Harper
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We'll support the government on issues if it's essential to the country but our primary responsibility is not to prop up the government, our responsibility is to provide an opposition and an alternative government for Parliament and for Canadians.
– Stephen Harper
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What the government has to do, if it wants to govern for any length of time, is it must appeal primarily to the third parties in the House of Commons to get them to support it.
– Stephen Harper
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Whether Canada ends up as o-ne national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion.
– Stephen Harper
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Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
– Sydney J. Harris
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Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote.
– Paul Harvey
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If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con' what is the opposite of 'progress'?
– Paul Harvey
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Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote.
– Will Harvey
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If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con' what is the opposite of 'progress'?
– Will Harvey
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I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
– Vaclav Havel
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When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
– Robert A. Heinlein
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If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
– Frank Herbert
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Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.
– Herbert Hoover
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The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.
– Hubert H. Humphrey
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I was criticized at some level within the Republican Party by those who say government should not be in the economic development business at all. My response is that the only country I know that doesn't have an economic development plan is Papa New Guinea.
– Jon Huntsman, Jr.
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Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.
– Cullen Hightower
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The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them.
– Cullen Hightower
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We oppose the reactionary policies of the U.S. government but we do not oppose the American people. We want to have many good friends in the United States.
– Kim Jong Il
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Government alone cannot solve the problems we deal with in our correctional facilities, treatment centers, homeless shelters and crisis centers - we need our faith-based and community partners.
– Dirk Kempthorne
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The income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment that has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.
– Alan Keyes
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