When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Politics is not bean bags. It’s serious, tough stuff.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don’t understand why it’s the government’s responsibility.

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

The only bipartisanship you ever see is when they finally sign a bill and everybody says, ‚Gee, isn’t that wonderful?‘

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

We have the best government that money can buy.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

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

So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the constitution of India. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.

How can we help President Obama?

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

Since the child knew his parents would give in, he tried the same trick again and again.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

The process of shaping opinion, attitudes, and perceptions was termed the ‚engineering of consent‘ by one of the founders of the modern public relations industry, Edward Bernays.

I could hardly sit through ‚Frozen.‘ There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

The Nihilistic Troll might pretend to be acting in the service of some cause or leader, but don’t be fooled. The cause and their supposedly strong convictions are simply a way to justify and provide cover for their abusive behavior.

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

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

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

I don’t write policy for my government.

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.

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.