Government quotes

Government

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

11.3K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside government — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Government quotes (page 7 of 568)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Haile Selassie Emperor
Government

"If a strong government finds that it can, with impunity, destroy a weak people, then the hour has struck for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment."

Read quote 68 likes
John Stuart Mill Philosopher, Political Economist
Government

"In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves."

Read quote 68 likes
August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
Government

"You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not government's responsibility. It is not your school's or your social club's or your church's or your neighbor's or your fellow citizen's. It is yours, utterly and singularly yours."

Read quote 64 likes
Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
Government

"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."

Read quote 64 likes
Government

"Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."

Read quote 64 likes
Franklin Pierce Politician
Government

"A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties."

Read quote 64 likes
Franklin Pierce Politician
Government

"The constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those ... who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy. ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

Read quote 64 likes