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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"A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democratic; for democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he should."
"When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?"
"If we have more people on the receiving end of government - more people as the middle class becomes sucked in more and more to these entitlement programs, for example - then we're going to be in a place where it's going to be hard to go back. It's going to be hard to go back again. It's going to be hard to take away stuff. It's not impossible."
"To the extent that the scientist's capacity for pursuing the truth depends upon costly apparatus, institutional collaboration and heavy capital investment by government or industry he is no longer his own master."
"All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion ; and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life."
"Government can screw up just about everything. Given enough power and time it will screw up everything."
"I ran for president in order to be able to try to change Washington D.C. from the inside. Our federal government is broken."
"The American dream is under attack because our government has been hijacked by the Liberals in Washington DC."
"A gold standard is to the moochers and looters in government what sunlight and garlic are to vampires."
"Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it."
"Advocacy groups, politicians, and bureaucrats use the government to advance their private good instead of the common good."
"The ultimate success of this government and the stability of its institutions, its progress in all that can make a nation honored, depend upon its adherence to the principles of truth and righteousness."
"In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed."
"In proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving them to the government, their desires will turn to repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannizing: while in proportion as all ready initiative and direction resides in the government, and individuals habitually feel and act as under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite for place and power."
"To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force."
"To hold that Congress has general police power would be to hold that it may accomplish objects not intrusted to the general government, and to defeat the operation of the 10th Amendment, declaring that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
"There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue, this is going to require an effort on everyone's part."
"I don't want a government shutdown. I don't think anyone does."
"Any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today."
"Our government's got a war on drugs. That's certainly better than no drugs at all."
