People Quotes

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.

~ Jeremiah Wright

It's very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

~ Jimmy Carter

In a country where Americans sense, quite genuinely, that their freedoms have been taken away by the government - as in the U.S. Patriot Act, as in NSA surveillance - people feel powerless.

~ Jay Parini

The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.

~ John Hume

The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.

~ George Bancroft

In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.

~ Fareed Zakaria

In 2006, I entered the presidential palace in the main square of La Paz as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Our government, under the slogan 'Bolivia Changes,' is committed to ending the colonialism, racism and exclusion that many of our people lived under for many centuries.

~ Evo Morales

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.

~ Clement Attlee

One of these days the people of Louisiana are going to get good government - and they aren't going to like it.

~ Huey Long

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.

~ Bob Riley

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.

~ Stephen Breyer

And I don't think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there's another set of moral codes, but I don't think government has a role.

~ Clarence Thomas

The lower caste people were killed as part of a conspiracy to dismiss my party's government.

~ Lalu Prasad Yadav

The job of the government isn't to go around and try and make people sacrifice, it's to try and make people free. The reason why we have a national defense is to protect our freedoms.

~ Grover Norquist

Now the British are coming. I think Cameron should ask the Chinese government not to make people 'disappear' or to jail them merely because they have different opinions.

~ Ai Weiwei

The government should now launch an initiative to encourage people to join the social work profession.

~ Andy Sawford

There are an awful lot of people who despise government precisely because it opened the door for common citizenship for people of all races and all natures in the United States.

~ Taylor Branch

Like all good citizens, the elderly and people with disabilities want to eradicate waste and fraud from government, but helping people with special needs meet their basic needs doesn't fit this description.

~ Joni Eareckson Tada

It is only when there is the supervision and critical oversight from the people that the government will be in a position to do an even better job, and employees of government departments will be the true public servants of the people.

~ Wen Jiabao

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

~ Thomas Sowell

The majority of Taiwan people cannot accept Taiwan becoming a second Hong Kong, nor can we accept Taiwan becoming a local government of the People's Republic of China or a Special Administrative Region of China.

~ Chen Shui-Bian

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.

~ Al Franken

This is a country for, of, and by the people not for, of, and by the government. If we turn it over to them we cannot complain about what they're doing because this is a natural course of men and we have to hold their feet to the fire.

~ Ben Carson

If you live in a place that you perceive to be a crowded place, you appreciate government; you see it as this thing that protects you against crime, that keeps order, that makes sure that nobody puts a massage parlor next to your house, that keeps other people's dogs from pooping on the sidewalk.

~ Gail Collins

Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.

~ Lysander Spooner

It's hard to get fired from the government. You have to, like, kill people.

~ Wanda Sykes

The mistake the apartheid government made was they gave the black people nothing, so they had nothing to lose. But now a lot of the former freedom-fighters are big-time capitalists. They've been given directorships in every major company. They're billionaires!

~ Wilbur Smith

I totally accept that it's a legitimate criticism that when you are involved in the day-to-day scrum of government... that what can get lost is the narrative, the hymn sheet... the song that inspires and lifts people's sights.

~ Nick Clegg

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

~ Mikhail Gorbachev

The Soviet government sprouted and grew out of the habits, the psychology, and the condition of the Russian people. It fitted them. They understand it.

~ Lincoln Steffens

People like getting what they think is free stuff from government.

~ John Stossel

The basic idea that if you increase government spending or you cut people's taxes that stimulates the economy and lowers the unemployment rate, is a very widely accepted idea. It's in every economics textbook, that's what we teach our undergraduates, and I certainly try to teach them the truth.

~ Christina Romer

Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.

~ Gerald R. Ford

Last, in restaurants you spend a lot of time dealing with people who are very unhappy. Soup has been spilled on their laps, they've waited 10 minutes to get their check so they can leave, and you learn how to listen, I think, in a much more proactive way than government does.

~ John Hickenlooper

Vetting and verifying information is one thing. Having our government sending out conflicting messages to the American people when conflict can be avoided is another.

~ Vito Fossella

The greater part of the governments on earth may be termed monarchical aristocracies, or hereditary dominions independent of the people.

~ Ezra Stiles

We got government off the backs of the people of India, particularly off the backs of India's entrepreneurs. We introduced more competition, both internal competition and external competition. We simplified and rationalized the tax system. We made risk-taking much more attractive.

~ Manmohan Singh

Get government out of our way, and let freedom and the spirit of the American people shine through.

~ Luis Fortuno

But there will be no justice, there will be no government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as long as the government and its officials permit bribery in any form.

~ John Jay Hooker