Government Quotes

Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.

~ John Ralston Saul

Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.

~ Will Rogers

Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.

~ Isaac Asimov

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

~ Ronald Reagan

The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive

~ Stefan Molyneux

I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.

~ James Madison

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.

~ Calvin Coolidge

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

By this means the government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.

~ John Maynard Keynes

I believe the term is ‘eminent domain.’Ah, yes. That means ‘theft by the government

~ Terry Pratchett

The U.S. is a cosmetic democracy.

~ John Pilger

[T]here are some human rights that are so deep that we can't negotiate them away. I mean people do heinous, terrible things. But there are basic human rights I believe that every human being has. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations says it for me. And it says there are two basic rights that can't be negotiated that government doesn't give for good behavior and doesn't take away for bad behavior. And it's the right not to be tortured and not to be killed. Because the flip side of this is that then when you say OK we're gonna turn over -- they truly have done heinous things, so now we will turn over to the government now the right to take their life. It involves other people in doing essentially the same kind of

~ Helen Prejean

My definition of democracy is - A form and a method of Government whereby revolutionary changes in the social life are brought about without bloodshed. That is the real test. It is perhaps the severest test. But when you are judging the quality of the material you must put it to the severest test.

~ B.r. Ambedkar

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Anarchy is a state of society where the only government is reason.

~ Michael Schwab

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

~ Thomas Paine

This country would not be a land of opportunity, America could not be America, if the people were shackled with government monopolies.

~ Calvin Coolidge

The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.

~ Zhuangzi

Now listen to the first three aims of the corporatist movement in Germany, Italy and France during the 1920s. These were developed by the people who went on to become part of the Fascist experience:(1) shift power directly to economic and social interest groups;(2) push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies;(3) obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest -- that is, challenge the idea of the public interest.This sounds like the official program of most contemporary Western governments.

~ John Ralston Saul

In philosophy seminars, the choice is usually between good and evil. In the real world, however, the choice is often between a bad guy and a worse guy.

~ Dinesh D'souza

In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself and having a deleterious effect on government service.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

~ John Stuart Mill

Government should be a place where people can come together, and no one gets left behind. No one…gets left behind. An instrument of good.

~ Aaron Sorkin

The health care bill is nothing about health care- it's about controlling the people.

~ David Lincoln

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed

~ William Penn

Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery! Then they get to say This time you did it to yourself. I won't play that game.

~ Sister Souljah

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class.

~ Giuseppe Prezzolini

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State.

~ Sophocles

That's the problem with this whole country. Fucking vast prosperity. No one has any real problems anymore. Ninety percent of the damn politicians in this town either think there's no war on terror, or if we'd just be nice to these zealots they'll leave us alone. Well, that ain't going to fucking happen. The Huns are circling, and we're sitting around arguing about gay rights and prayer and guns and global warming and all kinds of bullshit. These idiots will eventually wake up to the threat, but by then it might be too late. (Stan Hurley)

~ Vince Flynn

Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management.

~ George Monbiot

The IRS! They're like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

~ Jerry Seinfeld

The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.

~ Gene Sharp

To [the government] it didn't matter what happened to the American people as long as america in the abstract was kept strong.

~ Isaac Asimov

Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.

~ Terry Pratchett

It's to the Capitol's advantage to have us divided among ourselves.Another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers [of the Seam] and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another.

~ Suzanne Collins

Being less discriminative shouldn't mean protecting nasty people, then discriminating against the innocent

~ James Perrin

When a plutocracy is disguised as a democracy, the system is beyond corrupt.

~ Suzy Kassem

Unless government appropriately regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable, the public will not trust them to drill, baby, drill. And we must!

~ Sarah Palin