Government quotes

Government

11.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Government quotes (page 139 of 568)

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John Leo Journalist, Author
Government

"Bioethics has hardened into an activist ideology that pervades the medical world, the schools, and government."

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Government

"As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship."

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John Stuart Mill Philosopher, Political Economist
Government

"A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it"

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John Stuart Mill Philosopher, Political Economist
Government

"In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. ... Unless they are, there is not equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation."

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John Stuart Mill Philosopher, Political Economist
Government

"A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination."

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John Stuart Mill Philosopher, Political Economist
Government

"Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist."

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John Taylor Musician
Government

"Constitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing it, then "America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution." The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing."

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John Taylor Musician
Government

"In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constitute d; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed."

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Joseph Crowley Politician
Government

"The American people and American businesses are looking to the federal government to lead our nation on the path to economic recovery. It is time to stop splitting hairs. It is time to act."

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Joyce Meyer Author, Speaker
Government

"If God is in fact separated from the government, then we can never possibly have a godly government. There's no way for America to be good if she's not godly."

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Juan Cole Historian
Government

"To the extent that the (ISIS's) advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk. For the US to be bombing Sunni towns all these years later on behalf of Mr. al-Maliki would be to invite terrorism against the US."

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Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Government

"The Gulf War was a clear precedent as well, and it let us begin to understand how the US government would go to war to secure strategic oil reserves and potential markets."

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Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Government

"I consider both the West Bank and Gaza to be colonised, even though Gaza is not occupied in the same way that the West Bank is. The Israeli government and military control all goods that pass in or out of that area, and they have restricted employment and building material that would allow Palestinians to rebuild homes and structures that were destroyed by bombardment."

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Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Government

"I wonder whether I might have meant "terrify us" but perhaps as well there was a less than conscious effort to show that the suppression of debate about Palestine and about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement - within many academic circles - does seek to establish those who would address such issues in speech as already collaborating with "terrorist" regimes, although now only Hamas is officially terrorist according to the US government and its allies."

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Joseph Joubert Essayist, Moralist
Government

"Forms of government become established of themselves. They shape themselves, they are not created. We may give them strength and consistency, but we cannot call them into being. Let us rest assured that the form of government can never be a matter of choice: it is almost always a matter of necessity."

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John Stuart Mill Philosopher, Political Economist
Government

"Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government."

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John Stuart Mill Philosopher, Political Economist
Government

"The United States is no more a Christian nation because most of its citizens are Christians than it is a 'white' nation because most of its citizens are white. We are Americans because we practice democracy and believe in republican government, not because we practice revealed religion and believe in Bible-based government."

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John Muir Naturalist, Writer
Government

"Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns."

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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
Government

"The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-perfect Mind, over all his intellectual creation, is by proportioning rewards to piety and virtue, and punishments to disobedience and vice. ... The joys of heaven are prepared, and the horrors of hell in a future state, to render the moral government of the universe perfect and complete. Human government is more or less perfect, as it approaches nearer or diverges further from an imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government."

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