Government Quotes

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.

Alexander Tyle

There has never been a perfect government, because men have passions and if they did not have passions, there would be no need for government.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

A revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.

John Adams, (Diary, 1786)

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

Louis D. Brandeis

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all - wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Sir Winston Churchill, Hansard, November 11, 1947

The mightiest of weapons is truth. And everyone knows you? re not permitted to enter a Government building with a weapon.

John Alejandro King, a. k. a. The Covert Comic, www. covertcomic. com

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.

J. Michael Straczynski

It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.

Thomas Paine

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

Henry Commage

All governments eventually lean further and further towards aristocracy.

Frank Herbert, Dune

One of these days, the people are going to demand peace of the government, and the government is going to have to give it to them.

Dwight Eisenhowe

Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.

Adlai E. Jr. Stevenson

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.

Ronald Reagan

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

Harry S Truman, August 8, 1950

Our government sprang from and was made for the people - - Not the people for the government. To them it owes an allegiance from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom.

Andrew Johnson

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

Justice Anthony Kennedy

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect.

Sam Ewig

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...

Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women. On appointing 10 women to top government positions.

Lyndon B. Johnson

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Alexander Hamilton

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the governing of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

Judge of thine improvement, not by what thou speakest or writest, but by the firmness of thy mind, and the government of thy passions and affections.

Thomas Fulle

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781 - 82

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Sir Winston Churchill

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.

Albert Einstein

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams, Journal, 1772

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

Dwight D Eisenhowe

A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend? The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, 1860

During these times, when crazy people are running the government, all you can do is laugh.

Bill McKenney, Speech to the Harvard Antimony Society, August 15, 2005

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

Bertrand Russell

President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people.

Ralph Nade

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Albert Camus

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.

Clement Atlee

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Will Rogers