Government Quotes

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

~ William Ellery Channing

I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.

~ Naguib Mahfouz

When asked if I miss being in government, I usually try to lighten the moment by responding that I awake most days, read the paper, and then observe that, 'It's yet another great day to be the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.'

~ Michael Hayden

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

~ Ronald Reagan

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

~ Grover Cleveland

Since the tragedies, the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, and most importantly, to share intelligence information among government agencies and departments.

~ Randy Forbes

If the government regulates against use of drones or stem cells or artificial intelligence, all that means is that the work and the research leave the borders of that country and go someplace else.

~ Peter Diamandis

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

~ Joseph Pulitzer

There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

~ Bill Gates

The government of Sudan, employing a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.

~ Barton Gellman

As a digital technology writer, I have had more than one former student and colleague tell me about digital switchers they have serviced through which calls and data are diverted to government servers or the big data algorithms they've written to be used on our e-mails by intelligence agencies.

~ Douglas Rushkoff

Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.

~ Leon Panetta

When I resigned, I put the U.S. Government on notice that I'm going to stick to policy issues, that I have no intention of going out and blowing the cover off of the intelligence operations, that those are truly sensitive and they should not be exposed.

~ Scott Ritter

Here, again, as I conceive, gentlemen forget that this government is a republican one, resting exclusively in the intelligence and virtue of the People.

~ Caleb Cushing

All officers of the Intelligence Community, and especially its most senior officer, must conduct themselves in a manner that earns and retains the public trust. The American people are uncomfortable with government activities that do not take place in the open, subject to public scrutiny and review.

~ Dennis C. Blair

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

~ Margaret Thatcher

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

~ Jerry Brown

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

I think you may see again a rise at the federal government level for a - a call for the federal constitutional amendment, because people want to make sure that this definition of marriage remains secure, because after all, the family is the fundamental unit of government.

~ Michele Bachmann

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

The family was not only the social unit, but also the unit of government.

~ Charles Eastman

Defend the church. Defend the family. Defend the non-profit community. Defend them against a government that wants to weaken them.

~ Rick Santorum

Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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

The important consequences to the American States from this Declaration of Independence, considered as the ground and foundation of a future government, naturally suggest the propriety of proclaiming it in such a manner as that the people may be universally informed of it.

~ John Hancock

Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first. They will have the chance to reject today's rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people.

~ Donald Trump

The government, under my leadership, will act to implement the rule of law and to maintain the independence of the judicial system, which is one of the pillars of maintaining a democratic system.

~ Ariel Sharon

The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.

~ Janet Yellen

It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That's set out in the Constitution.

~ Sandra Day O'connor

Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government.

~ Paul Ryan

There's very little proof that Obama or anyone in his administration - particularly Hillary Clinton - truly understands or believes the tenets in the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. If they did, they would know that they are running a federal government in direct contradiction to both of those sacred documents.

~ Chuck Norris

Our government leaders... have made many mistakes in the past when they have lost sight of the sacred American values rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We are at the brink of even graver mistakes and assaults on these values.

~ Samuel Dash

From the first moment of independence, the United States has been dedicated to innovation as a way of government and a way of life.

~ Robert Kennedy

The Declaration of Independence pronounced the irrevocable decree of political separation, between the United States and their people on the one part, and the British king, government, and nation on the other.

~ John Quincy Adams

The most effective check and balance on government has been an independent press which maintains its credibility by ensuring that its criticism is balanced and based on fact - based indeed on solid journalistic work.

~ Malcolm Turnbull

Great research universities must insist on independence from government and on the exercise of academic freedom.

~ Alan Dershowitz

I want my candidacy for the presidency of the United States to stand for a moment when we the people, stand once again for the independence from a government that has gotten too big and spends too much and has taken away too much of our liberties.

~ Michele Bachmann

While the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital part in making its actions virtual Holy Writ for the bulk of the people, it is also and ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus and appointed by the executive and legislative branches.

~ Murray Rothbard

Christian conservatives care about their families eating. They're concerned about energy independence. They're concerned about functional government.

~ Mike Huckabee

The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act.

~ Andrew Cuomo