Government Quotes
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Our government is so corrupt that citizens no longer become incensed when they learn the CIA is running drugs into the U.S.
– Terry Reed
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In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.
– John Reed
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My friends, we're going to have to help ourselves. No one is going to save us. The federal government certainly isn't going to bail us out.
– Bob Taft
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– Jalal Talabani
Government has a legitimate function, but the private sector has one too, and it is superior. In other words, people are better than institutions.
– Cal Thomas
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In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.
– Cal Thomas
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No power on earth is greater than a mind and soul reawakened. Our Constitution begins 'we the people', not 'us the government'.
– Cal Thomas
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Sometimes people need a kick in the pants to get them to do what they would be doing if government weren't there as a perpetual parent.
– Cal Thomas
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Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts - a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.
– Henry David Thoreau
– Leo Tolstoy
Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth.
– Mark Twain
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– Robert Taft
– Bob Thaves
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I want to stress to you that all this needs to be done in a disciplined way, and that when people will be asking about me and writing about me, that all this be done in a responsible way. But if you write that I have said something against the Soviet government and said that it is better to work elsewhere, then I shall have difficulties back home.
– Leon Theremin
To avoid the necessity of a permanent debt and its inevitable consequences, I have advocated and endeavored to carry into effect the policy of confining the appropriations for the public service to such objects only as are clearly with the constitutional authority of the Federal Government.
– Martin Van Buren
At the period when these events took place, I had just returned from a scientific research in the disagreeable territory of Nebraska, in the United States. In virtue of my office as Assistant Professor in the Museum of Natural History in Paris, the French Government had attached me to that expedition. After six months in Nebraska, I arrived in New York towards the end of March, laden with a precious collection. My departure for France was fixed for the first days in May.
– Jules Verne
The internet has no government, no constitution, no laws, no rights, no police, no courts. Don't talk about fairness or innocence, and don't talk about what should be done. Instead, talk about what is being done and what will be done by the amorphous unreachable indefinable blob called the internet user base.
– Paul Vixie
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In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
– Voltaire
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I don't think anybody that knows me would think that I'm so understanding. Most people say I'm too pushy, I'm too aggressive, I'm too assertive, I'm too confrontational. That I ask for too much. I've never been considered patient, or even conciliatory in most instances. But I don't think anything happens in a short period of time. Particularly when you're talking about dealing with Congress and government. It just doesn't happen.
– Maxine Waters
I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger.
– Daniel Webster
– Byron R. White
– George F. Will
Liberty and happiness have a powerful enemy on each hand; on the one hand tyranny, on the other licentiousness [anarchy]. To guard against the latter, it is necessary to give the proper powers to government; and to guard against the former, it is necessary that those powers should be properly distributed.
– James Wilson
Many health care providers, particularly physicians in rural and urban areas, are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.
– Ron Wyden
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– James Warburg
After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government's responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.
– Gary Webb
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You can't believe the government - on anything. And you especially can't believe them when they're talking about important stuff.
– Gary Webb
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– John Sharp Williams
I don't see any justification for the federal government owning land, other than the Statue of Liberty and maybe a few parks, maybe a few refuges. But to just own land to do nothing with it I think is a disservice to the Constitution.
– Don Young
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We wonder why we have got the Freemen or the militants. We wonder why we have got unrest in this country. It is because our government, in fact, has got out of hand and out of line, with the Endangered Species Act.
– Don Young
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Government means politics, and interference by government carries with it always the implication of coercion. We may accept the expanding power of bureaucrats so long as we bask in their friendly smile. But it is a dangerous temptation. Today politics may be our friend and tomorrow we may be its victims.
– Owen D. Young
– Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
– Arthur Zimmermann
Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.
– Joseph Addison
Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.
– William O. Douglas
– Thomas Jefferson
– Thomas Jefferson
This is Democratic bedrock: we don’t let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor’s car won’t start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one and then you turn into a Democrat. A liberal is a conservative who’s been through treatment.
– Garrison Keillor
In describing the Mound-builders no effort has been made to paint their costume, their modes of life or their system of government. They are presented to the reader almost exclusively under a single aspect, and under the influence of a single emotion. It matters not to us whether they dwelt under a monarchical or popular form of polity; whether king or council ruled their realms; nor, in fine, what was their exact outward condition. It is enough for us to know, and enough for our humanity to inquire, that they existed, toiled, felt and suffered; that to them fell, in these pleasant regions, their portion of the common heritage of our race, and that around those ancient hearth-stones, washed to light on the banks of the far western rivers, once gossiped and enjoyed life, a nation that has utterly faded away.
– Cornelius Mathews
The omission of an expected conjunction is called an asyndeton. Caesar is supposed to have said about Gaul: I came, I saw, I conquered. Lincoln concluded the Gettysburg Address, That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Caesar seems to have omitted his conjunction to speed things up; he is emphasizing how quickly the conquest of a place follows from its being sighted by a great and ambitious general. Lincoln's omission is more subtle—or so it seems to me. Usually the items on a list are different but related things: eggs, butter, cheese. Sometimes they achieve a unity in which their distinctiveness is lost to all but the analytic mind, a good cheese omelet. Or perhaps we might even decide that they are but manifestations or expressions of the same thing. Lincoln would have us see these three aspects of government as constituting an inseparable whole. The asyndeton helps him do this.Of course, these two distinguishable usages of asyndeton are not mutually exclusive. Lincoln's asyndeton contributes to the striking brevity of his address. And the psychoanalytically subtle among us will point out that at some level seeing is organically connected with conquering (and many other things as well).
– Arthur Quinn
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
– John Steinbeck
[People constantly requesting government intervention] are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.
– Margaret Thatcher
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.
– Henry David Thoreau