Government Quotes

This administration in Washington that's in power now clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need, but it's the most qualified to make the most central decisions for every American in every area.
– Rick Perry
There's something fundamentally wrong with a system where there's been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.
– Sean Connery
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
– Will Rogers
There's never been a nation like the United States, ever. It begins with the principles of our founding documents, principles that recognize that our rights come from God, not from our government.
– Marco Rubio
There's much more we can be doing in Parliament, we could be giving more power back to people at local government level, through local referendums.
– Theresa May
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
There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained.
– Ron Paul
There is nothing inherently fair about equalizing incomes. If the government penalizes you for working harder than somebody else, that is unfair. If you save your money but retire with the same pension as a free-spending neighbor, that is also unfair.
– Arthur C. Brooks
There is nothing anyone can do anyway. The public has no power. The government knows I'm not a criminal. The parole board knows I'm not a criminal. The judge knows I'm not a criminal.
– Jack Kevorkian
There is a Western world. There is America. There is Great Britain and Germany and France and Russia and China and other nations. I doubt that there is one country amongst those I mentioned which has a desire to see Iran, with its fundamentalist, Islamic, extremist government, possessing nuclear weapons.
– Ehud Olmert
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
– Charles De Secondat
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
– Andrew Jackson
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people.
– Nelson Mandela
There are good people and bad people in all organizations fundamentally however, when you look at the basis of the Tea Party it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with an economic recovery. It has to do with limiting the role of our government in our lives. It has to do with free markets.
– Tim Scott
There are a lot of good causes out there, but they can't possibly all be served by government.
– Jesse Ventura
The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
– Milton Friedman
The weather is like the government, always in the wrong.
– Jerome K. Jerome
The universities have got a job here as well in making sure that people actually understand that we're open for university students coming into the U.K. There's a job here not just for the government, I think there's a job for the universities as well to make sure that people know that we are open.
– Theresa May
The universe never did make sense I suspect it was built on government contract.
– Robert A. Heinlein
The United States is at a critical juncture in time. Our government is riddled with historic debt, and the limited resources of philanthropic and non-profit efforts cannot meet the scale of social challenges we face with necessary force.
– Simon Mainwaring
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
The UK desperately needs less government and freer markets.
– Rupert Murdoch
The U.S. will ignore the opinion of the Iraqi people and it will compose the new government according to its own desires.
– Muqtada al Sadr
The truth is in California you can't build a new manufacturing facility, and businesses are leaving in droves because of bad government policy.
– Carly Fiorina
The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.
– Newt Gingrich
The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors two, facility to acquirers and three, hope to all.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The thought about Republicans is, we're supposed to be Jeffersonian. That government governs the best that governs the least.
– Pat Robertson
The thing is, Obama is right that it would be a calamity for the government to default on its debt by not meeting its obligations. Such a thing has never happened and can't be allowed to happen.
– John Podhoretz
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
– Thomas Jefferson
The second office in the government is honorable and easy the first is but a splendid misery.
– Thomas Jefferson
The right way to reign in healthcare costs is not by applying more government and more controls and making it more like the post office, it's by making it more like a consumer-driven market.
– Mitt Romney
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
– Thomas Jefferson
The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.
– Herbert Spencer
The relationships that people have - that are sexual, psychological, emotional - these relationships are not open to supervision by parents, schools, churches, or government. Nobody has any right to intervene at all in any kind of relationship like that.
– Madalyn Murray O'Hair
The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.
– Thomas Sowell
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
– Plato
The public is upset. If they haven't lost their job, they know somebody that has. If they haven't lost their house, they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something's wrong, it's government's job to fix it, it must be government that's responsible for causing it.
– Michael Bloomberg
The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
– Chinua Achebe
The problem is that when government controls the economy, those who can influence government keep winning, and everybody else just stays the same.
– Marco Rubio
The primary victims of Katrina, those who were given the least help by the government, those rescued last or not at all, were overwhelmingly people of color largely hidden from the mainstream of society.
– Jonathan Kozol
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
– Abraham Lincoln
The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.
– Daniel Webster
The people are the government, administering it by their agents they are the government, the sovereign power.
– Andrew Jackson
The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
– James Madison
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.
– Vladimir Lenin
The only thing growing faster than the federal government's deficit is Chris Matthews' man-crush on Barack Obama.
– Tim Pawlenty
The number of illegal activities were so large that one was bound to come out and lead to the uncovering of the others. Nixon was too willing to use the power of government to settle scores and get even with enemies.
– Bob Woodward
The nuclear arsenal that Pakistan has, I believe is secure. I think the government and the military have taken adequate steps to protect that.
– Hillary Clinton
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
– Thomas Jefferson
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
– P. J. O'Rourke
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
– Ronald Reagan
The lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government, Government should not support the people.
– Grover Cleveland
The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity.
– Martin Van Buren
The Left regards the Constitution as defective and outmoded - in part because it impedes the government's ability to control institutions, like churches and families, which stand between the state and individuals.
– Gary Bauer
The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle, but an opportunity to change the government of the day.
– Arthur Scargill
The Israeli government has proved over the past year its commitment to peace, both in words and deeds. By contrast, the Palestinians are posing preconditions for renewing the diplomatic process in a way they have not done over the course of 16 years.
– Benjamin Netanyahu
The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
– Barack Obama
The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.
– P. J. O'Rourke
The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
– John Quincy Adams
The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth.
– Steve Wynn
The growth of modern constitutional government compels for its successful practice the exercise of reason and considerate judgment by the individual citizens who constitute the electorate.
– Elihu Root
The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.
– David Mamet
The government's desire to expand global trade may be understandable, but we mustn't give away too much. We must tell our elected representatives to at least delay the Canada-China FIPA until it has been examined more thoroughly, and to reconsider the inclusion of investor-state arbitration mechanisms in all trade deals.
– David Suzuki
The government of Israel doesn't like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.
– Noam Chomsky
The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.
– Jeremiah Wright
The government I led gave ordinary people peace, security, dignity, and opportunity to progress.
– Benazir Bhutto
The government invented the Internet.
– Jon Meacham
The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.
– John Bright
The goal to strive for is a poor government but a rich people.
– Andrew Johnson
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
The fundamental purpose of government is to protect its citizens.
– Arlen Specter
The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.
– David Mamet
The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
– Mitch Daniels
The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war, but in a wary, if often underplayed, alliance. History is unmistakable on this point.
– Jon Meacham
The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.
– Sandra Day O'Connor
The essential job of government is to facilitate, not frustrate, job development.
– Andrew Cuomo
The essence of good government is trust.
– Kathleen Sebelius
The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act.
– Andrew Cuomo
The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.
– Franklin Pierce
The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government.
– Jim Hightower
The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.
– Tom Clancy
The conservative movement today is like that tall ship with its proud captain: strong, accomplished but veering off course into the dangerous and uncharted waters of big government republicanism.
– Mike Pence
The choice between a Labour government and a Tory one is sharpening minds.
– Lucy Powell
The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.
– James A. Garfield
The Canadian government continues to say they will not help us if we go to war with Iraq. However, the prime minister of Canada said he'd like to help, but he's pretty sure that last time he checked, Canada had no army.
– Conan O'Brien
The bringing-about of order is the first and fundamental task of government. We accept limits on our rights for the sake of a larger social compact all the time.
– Jon Meacham
The Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions.
– Noah Webster
The belief that recipients of government aid are better off the more we spend on them is remarkably persistent. No matter how many times this central tenet of liberalism gets debunked, like Brett Favre, it just keeps coming back.
– Paul Ryan
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.
– George Washington
The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.
– Woodrow Wilson
The answer for healthcare is market incentives, not healthcare by a Godzilla-sized government bureaucracy.
– Mitt Romney
The American Dream, coupled with government subsidies of utilities and cheap consumer goods courtesy of slave labour somewhere else, has kept the poor huddled masses from rising up.
– Elizabeth Wurtzel
The administration of justice is the firmest pillar of government.
– George Washington
That's the definition of 'success' for the modern Democrat Party. As many people dependent on government as possible is the objective.
– Rush Limbaugh
That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.
– Lysander Spooner
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
– Thomas Jefferson
That fatal drollery called a representative government.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Thankfully, due to the United Kingdom and the commitment of the Westminster government we are able to ensure that money brought in, whether it be from the City of London or from North Sea oil, can be pooled and directed to wherever it is needed most. That is what being in the United Kingdom is all about.
– Iain Duncan Smith
Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936, and it was a monopoly, and there was only one broadcaster and it operated on a license which is not the same as a government grant.
– David Attenborough
Surely the President can agree with us, that theft from government is not good. I know it's bold. It's out on the edge. I know from a Chicago-Springfield background it's hard to fully grasp that honesty could be part of government.
– Newt Gingrich