Government quotes
11.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Government grew under [Ronald] Reagan. He was the strongest opponent of free markets in the post-war history among presidents. But it doesn't matter what the reality is; they concocted an image that you worship."
"Take Cuba. A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it too. But the government won't allow it."
"There are by now declassified documents from the 1950s that tells you a lot about what's going on in Egypt and we should have known it then. It's about exactly what's happening, how we can disregard public opinion as long as the dictators we support are capable of suppressing their populations. So to hell with public opinion. That's all right there in the 1950's. That's not security. That's not security of the government. That's, if anything, security from its own population. And there's a lot of that."
"I've spent a lot of time working on declassified documents - and they do get declassified after decades - you look at the record of declassified documents, and they are mostly concerned with keeping what the government does secret from its own population. It's mostly defense of the power system from its own population. Very little is authentic security."
"If you believe in democracy, why shouldn't you know what the government is doing?"
"Say the Pentagon Papers, - that material went much deeper. It went into internal government planning back for twenty - five years. Those are things that the public should have known about. In a democracy they should have known what leaders thinking and planning about major enterprises like the Vietnam war. It was kept secret from them."
"Silicon Valley benefits, as all of industry, from highly protectionist policy - patent policies and things like that - which come out of the government."
"Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without massive government spending and in fact initiative."
"Around 2008 and again in 2013 NATO officially offered the Ukraine the opportunity to join NATO. That's something no Russian government is ever going to accept. It's right at the geopolitical heartland of Russia."
"The dynamics of the Taliban now appear to be very different and complex, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they attack governments and mainstream parties."
"The threat is that the public will know what the government is up to. Any system of power is going to want to keep free from public surveillance, that's natural. Its shouldn't be but, its very natural."
"I think that has a lot of dangers, as does government surveillance, which is way too high."
"I wrote a study about this question, The Lessons of October, which served as a pretext for my elimination from the government."
"The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine."
"Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable;even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?"
"Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage."
"The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it."
"Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government."
"There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular."
"Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject.... Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still, his quality is not wisdom, but prudence."
