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I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
– John Maynard Keynes
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When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.
– Marquis de Lafayette
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The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.
– Vladimir Lenin
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You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.
– Rush Limbaugh
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You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.
– Rush Limbaugh
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Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
– Abraham Lincoln
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The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
– Abraham Lincoln
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In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.
– Walter Lippmann
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
– Walter Lippmann
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I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.
– Harold MacMillan
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It is the duty of Her Majesty's government neither to flap nor to falter.
– Harold MacMillan
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Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
– James Madison
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The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
– James Madison
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Every country has the government it deserves.
– Joseph de Maistre
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The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world - no ideals.
– Golda Meir
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All government, of course, is against liberty.
– H. L. Mencken
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
– H. L. Mencken
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The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
– H. L. Mencken
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The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.
– James Monroe
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There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
– Michel de Montaigne
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The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.
– Lewis Mumford
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Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.
– Gouverneur Morris
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Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.
– Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people.
– Ralph Nader
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I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?
– Willie Nelson
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Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.
– Richard Milhous Nixon
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If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.
– Peggy Noonan
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I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.
– Edward Norton
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It's dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing.
– Edward Norton
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My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.
– Grover Norquist
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Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.
– P. J. O'Rourke
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Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
– P. J. O'Rourke
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If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
– P. J. O'Rourke
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Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
– P. J. O'Rourke
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Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.
– Robert Orben
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Americans no longer look to government for economic security; rather, they look to their portfolios.
– Bill Owens
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As a governor, I am naturally inclined to focus on the domestic side of protecting the United States.
– Bill Owens
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That government is best which governs least.
– Thomas Paine
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Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
– William Penn
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To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
– Wendell Phillips
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Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
– Wendell Phillips
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For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.
– Alexander Pope
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I'm very, very concerned about the Bush presidency. I'm worried about the kinds of cuts in domestic programs that mean something to a lot of people, including members of my family, who depend on certain things from the government.
– Sarah Jessica Parker
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Government help to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
– Ayn Rand
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Journalists should denounce government by public opinion polls.
– Dan Rather
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Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
– Ronald Reagan
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Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
– Ronald Reagan
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Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
– Ronald Reagan
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If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.
– Ronald Reagan
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Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
– Ronald Reagan
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The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.
– Ronald Reagan
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Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.
– Ronald Reagan
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A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.
– James Reston
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Americans accept that gangsters are running the government.
– Tim Robbins
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You don't pay taxes - they take taxes.
– Chris Rock
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Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.
– Will Rogers
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Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.
– Will Rogers
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The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
– Theodore Roosevelt
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The government is us; we are the government, you and I.
– Theodore Roosevelt
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Many people around the President have sizeable egos before entering government, some with good reason. Their new positions will do little to moderate their egos.
– Donald H. Rumsfeld
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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 H. Rumsfeld
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
– Bertrand Russell
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The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
– Wilhelm Reich
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People who relieve others of their money with guns are called robbers. It does not alter the immorality of the act when the income transfer is carried out by government.
– Cal Thomas
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How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
– Henry David Thoreau
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Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
– Henry David Thoreau
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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
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A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.
– Harry S. Truman
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A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.
– Harry S. Truman
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Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
– Mark Twain
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No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
– Barbara Tuchman
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An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
– Voltaire
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The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.
– Voltaire
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Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
– Earl Warren
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It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
– George Washington
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Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.
– George Washington
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Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
– George Washington
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If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.
– George F. Will
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If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.
– Woodrow Wilson
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The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
– Woodrow Wilson
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The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.
– James Wolcott
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If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.
– Fred Woodworth
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Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy.
– Xenophon
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Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
– Otto von Bismark
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Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
– Thomas Jefferson
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A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
– George Bernard Shaw
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Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
– Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
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It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
– Tom Stoppard
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You've got the Democratic Party that now depends on more government spending and actual building the dependence on government in order to increase their political party.
– Jim DeMint
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You know, when Republicans were in charge, we doubled the debt. But, now, our concern is the Democrats are in charge and they're tripling the debt. So, really, our concern is that we want smaller government.
– Rand Paul
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You know, I have found a new way to get high and stay spaced out for hours on end, and the government can't stop me... It's called senility.
– Robert Anton Wilson
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You know what the fastest growing religion in America is? Statism. The growing reliance on government.
– Marco Rubio
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You know that big government doesn't hurt big corporations. They've got the best lawyers and accountants in the world. You know who gets destroyed by big government? It's the little guys.
– Marco Rubio
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You have citizens who don't understand how government works and they're kind of soured on it. All they do is criticize. They have no idea that they can make things happen.
– Sandra Day O'Connor
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You can't win with some people. If you're not in government, you're criticised for being not serious. If you are in government, you're criticised for wanting power. That's the Labour party's line of attack, and it's a bit ridiculous.
– Vince Cable
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You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.
– Rand Paul
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You can't have a situation in which companies proceed on a permanent basis relying only on cash from the government.
– Lawrence Summers
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You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there.
– Dick Cheney
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