government quotes

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‚What have you done?‘

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

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

We are all the President’s men.

People forget… that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that’s what happened.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

I do have a political agenda. It’s to have as few regulations as possible.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

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

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

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.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

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

People do not make wars; governments do.

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

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.

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.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

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.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.

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.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

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.

There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‚The government’s corrupt,‘ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

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

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

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.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

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.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

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.

I have been very happy in the House of Representatives.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.