1000 Popular Quotes of Government

1000 Popular Quotes of Government

found this blog to be really educational because it showed how different quotes have been said by people who have ruled democracies. I think Winston Churchill’s quote was definitely my favorite.

• “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt”
• In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson”
• A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” – James Madison

Quotes	Author
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.	John Adams
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.	Gerald R. Ford
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.	Milton Friedman
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.	Abraham Lincoln
How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?	Charles de Gaulle
It&’s not the voting that&’s democracy; it&’s the counting.	Tom Stoppard
I&’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.	William F. Buckley, Jr.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I&’m from the government and I&’m here to help.	Ronald Reagan
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.	P. J. O&’Rourke
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.	James Madison
In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.	Cal Thomas
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.	Hubert H. Humphrey
Corruption is the enemy of development, and of good governance. It must be got rid of. Both the government and the people at large must come together to achieve this national objective.	Pratibha Patil
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.	Winston Churchill
Government&’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.	Ronald Reagan
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.	H. L. Mencken
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.	James Russell Lowell
Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.	Franklin D. Roosevelt
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.	Ayn Rand
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.	Andrew Jackson
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.	Thomas Paine
If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.	Fred Woodworth
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.	Abraham Lincoln
The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.	Ludwig von Mises
Majority rule only works if you&’re also considering individual rights. Because you can&’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.	Larry Flynt
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.	Milton Friedman
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.	Thomas Jefferson
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples&’ money.	Margaret Thatcher
The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.	Mikhail Gorbachev
If &’pro&’ is the opposite of &’con&’ what is the opposite of &’progress&’?	Paul Harvey
Government&’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.	Ronald Reagan
Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.	Louis D. Brandeis
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.	George Bernard Shaw
A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.	Rene Descartes
Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.	Richard Lamm
The essence of good government is trust.	Kathleen Sebelius
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.	Thomas Jefferson
We have the best government that money can buy.	Mark Twain
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we&’ll ever see on this earth!	Ronald Reagan
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.	William Penn
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.	Jonathan Swift
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?	Saint Augustine
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.	Gore Vidal
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other&’s consent.	Abraham Lincoln
Democracy is an abuse of statistics.	Jorge Luis Borges
Socialism means slavery.	John Dalberg-Acton
Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.	Mark Twain
If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.	P. J. O&’Rourke
You don&’t pay taxes – they take taxes.	Chris Rock
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.	Albert Einstein
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It&’s not tyranny we desire; it&’s a just, limited, federal government.	Alexander Hamilton
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.	Woodrow Wilson
The government is us; we are the government, you and I.	Theodore Roosevelt
If you like small government you need to work hard at having a strong national defense that is not so militant. Personal liberty is the purpose of government, to protect liberty – not to run your personal life, not to run the economy, and not to pretend that we can tell the world how they ought to live.	Ron Paul
I&’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn&’t work. Of course it doesn&’t work. We are supposed to work it.	Alexander Woollcott
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.	Thomas Jefferson
The happiness of society is the end of government.	John Adams
Government &’help&’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.	Ayn Rand
Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.	Henry Clay

Quotes of Government

• Democracy is not the absence of conflict.
• Democracy is the victory of human rights over all contrary claims.-Eleanor Roosevelt
• Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.-Arthur Schopenhauer
• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.-Thomas Jefferson
• The very purpose of government is to protect life, liberty and property. And when government assumes other functions, it defeats its own purpose.-Henry Clay
• “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” ― Winston Churchill”
• Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.”― Aristotle
• “I do not believe in democracy.”― Adolf Hitler”
• Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy; such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science to the wanton pleasures or caprice of one individual.”Paragraph:

Winston Churchill	Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Edmund Burke	“Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little.”
James Madison	“The effect of [a representative democracy is] to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation…”
Benjamin Rush	“There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.”
John Adams	“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who, have a right …and a desire to know”
Thomas Jefferson	“That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.”
Dwight Eisenhower	“Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free men.”
Eleanor Roosevelt	“Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else’s business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.”
Aristotle	“The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”
James Buchanan	“I like the noise of democracy.”
Jonathan D. Casper	“The freedom to express varying and often opposing ideas is essential to variety of conceptions of democracy. If democracy is viewed as essentially a process – a way in which collective decisions for a society are made – free expression is crucial to the openness of the process and to such characteristics as elections, representation of interests, and the like.”
Alexis deTocqueville	“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
Robert F. Kennedy	“At the heart of western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man…is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society.”
Alan Keyes	“The act of voting is one opportunity for us to remember that our whole way of life is predicated on the capacity of ordinary people to judge carefully and well.”
Abraham Lincoln	“Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections.”
Thomas Paine	“…the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.””Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt	“The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind – men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others — men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves.”
Margaret Thatcher	“All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual.”
E.B. White	“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.”
John F. Kennedy	“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
Mohandas K. Gandhi	“To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.”
Thomas Jefferson	“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”
Benjamin Franklin	“They that give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Henry David Thoreau	“That government is best which governs least.”
John Locke	“The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.”
Lord Acton	“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Isaac Asimov	“Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.”
Karl Marx	“If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.”
Walt Whitman	“Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between [people], and their beliefs – in religion, literature, colleges and schools – democracy in all public and private life…”

Churchill Democracy Quote

The mode of governing the country, according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut, and most administrations move in it because it is easier to move there than anywhere else.

We want government to stave off lawlessness and war and chaos and economic misery so that we can wholeheartedly enjoy the pure goodness of life.

Government is merely a servant – merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

There are but two sorts of government: one where men show their teeth at each other, and one where men show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest.

The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

A government of laws, and not of men

People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

There is good government when those who are near are made happy, and when those who are afar are attracted.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.

Who knows what the hell a government is or what the hell a government does

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.

The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth.

A government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back.