Government quotes
11.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside government — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I was a minister in the Frente Popular (Popular Front) government, one of the three in Chile during the Pedro Aguirre Cerda years, and I was as much a Socialist then as I am today."
"Journalists go to press briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists too much."
"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption."
"The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government"
"It is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the General Government. The only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest."
"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe."
"Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them."
"Americans accept that gangsters are running the government."
"Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried."
"The Right's view of government and the Left's view of big business are both correct."
"The Maharashtra government is working out a package for the worst-affected villages of the state in the recent floods. But we know whenever such calamities occur; whatever we do is not enough...more has to be done."
"When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master."
"We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process."
"Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse."
"We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth."
"I'm proud of having been one of the first to recognize that states and the federal government have a duty to protect our natural resources from the damaging effects of pollution that can accompany industrial development."
"Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process."
"It is only the Negro leadership, the bourgeois, hand-picked, handful of Negroes who think that they're going to get some kind of respect, recognition, or protection from the Government."
"Nothing in the Constitution of the United States gives the Congress or the Executive Branch the power to attempt the task of regulating climate, as impossible as that would be under any realistic scenarios. No national security emergency exists relative to climate that would warrant increased governmental control of energy production. Today's Americans have an obligation to future Americans to elect leaders who do not believe in an omnipotent government but believe, as did the Founders, in limited government, and in the preservation of liberty and the natural rights of the people."
"South Africans have no concept of time and this is also why we can't solve poverty and social problems… It's now 10 years since the fall of the Apartheid government and we cannot blame Apartheid for being tardy."
