Government Quotes

Just in general, any government throughout history hasn't really wanted its people to be educated, because then they couldn't control them as easily.

Maynard James Keenan

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

Grover Cleveland

You can't win with some people. If you're not in government, you're criticised for being not serious. If you are in government, you're criticised for wanting power. That's the Labour party's line of attack, and it's a bit ridiculous.

Vince Cable

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

C. Wright Mills

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Lord Melbourne

Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.

Dean Acheson, from a speech in I

You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

Abraham Lincoln

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.

Barack Obama

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.

Thomas Jefferson

I think the country's getting disgusted with Washington partly because of the decline of civility in government.

George McGovern

We don't need a weakened government but a strong government that would take responsibility for the rights of the individual and care for the society as a whole.

Vladimir Putin

And I have to point out that government doesn't tax to get the money it needs, government always needs the money it gets.

Ronald Reagan

But those who believe that what our people desire is big government are living in a state of delusion.

Marco Rubio

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

John W. Gardner

What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.

Christopher Hitchens

I don't know people who don't say, boy the government is working better now.

Andrew Cuomo

We say to the British government: you have kept those sculptures for almost two centuries. You have cared for them as well as you could, for which we thank you. But now in the name of fairness and morality, please give them back.

Melina Mercouri

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large...

Thomas Jefferson

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences

Thomas Jefferson

There is too much government today. We've got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Ray Bradbury