Government Quotes

Most popular government quotes

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a handy servant and a dangerous master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

helping others tyranny

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
Every country has the government it deserves.
Governments need both shepherds and butchers.
Government expands to absorb revenue, and then some.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Good government is no substitute for self-government.


The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
Governments are the only vessels that leak from the top.
An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

democracy voting politics

A government is the only vessel known to leak from the top.
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.

censorship media

The only good government... Is a bad one in a hell of a fright.


No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.


Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.


No man is good enough to govern another without the other's consent.

slavery democracy


funny humor

Fear and hope are the two great instruments for the governance of men.
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.

civic duty

Government can't give us anything without depriving us of something else.
The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government power.

regulations freedom






conviction regulations



We don't have to expect everything from those who govern us; that would be juvenile.


There are two great antagonistic principles at the root of all government—stability and experiment.
Nature, our father and mother,
gave us all we have got.
The state, our elder brother,
swipes the lot.


There are two periods when Congress does no business. One is before the holidays, and the other after.
Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be a system of a regular government.


Britain has invented a new missile. It's called the civil servant – it doesn't work and it can't be fired.


Knowing exactly how much of the future can be introduced into the present is the secret of a great government.


It will take some time to accomplish the things I have described.  Government is an ocean liner, not a speedboat.
We should know everything we can about government — and the first thing we should know is what we're paying for it.
In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the substitute is light taxes.


It is simply, and solely, the abundance of money within a state that makes the difference in its grandeur and power.

sheep Activism



It's every American's duty to support his government, but not necessarily in the style to which it has become accustomed.
The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

America democracy

All government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses.

public relations marketing



It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.

military soldiers


power communism



Government, in the Conservative view, is something like fire.  Under control, it is the most useful of servants; out of control, it is a ravaging tyrant.


I do not deny the possibility that the people may err in an election; but if they do, the true [cure] is in the next election, and not in the treachery of the person elected.


It is a seldom proferred argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as to what the government is doing.


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.
I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all.

America regulations


America democracy



There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual; the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.

America iconic democracy

People are historical subjects, which is to say, citizens and members of the pueblo [nation]. The state and society should generate the social conditions that promote and act as guardian of their rights and allow them to be builders of their own destiny.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. When ever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

America American constitution

As the word "liberal" is, in its classical meaning, the opposite of authoritarian, it is more accurate, therefore, to characterize the Modern Liberal as a Statist. ... The primary principle around which the Statist organizes can be summed up in a single word—equality.



democracy America

I have seen it happen more often than not in government that when one asks for a choice, one is always given three: two absurd ones and the preferred one. And the experienced bureaucrat can usually tell the preferred one because it is almost always the one typed in the middle.


Personally, I think government is a tool, like a hammer.  You can use a hammer to build with or you can use a hammer to destroy with.  There is nothing intrinsically good or evil about the hammer itself.  It is the purposes to which it is put and the skill with which it is used that determine whether the hammer's work is good or bad.
In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the President] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as Congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a Congress?



America democracy

The State is made for man, not man for the State.