Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

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.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be – protect themselves. That’s why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.

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.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

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.

Our future cannot depend on the government alone. The ultimate solutions lie in the attitudes and the actions of the American people.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

We have the best government that money can buy.

None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

I do not believe that government should be in the business of telling women what they should do with their bodies.

Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

We are all the President’s men.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.

The government’s job is good governance for everybody. My government will make policies; if you fit into it, come on board, or stay where you are. My job is not to spoon-feed anyone.

I have been very happy in the House of Representatives.

Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I believe that a government has only one religion – India first. A government has only one holy book – our Constitution. A government has only one kind of devotion – towards nation.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

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

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.