government quotes

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

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

It sure is hell to be president.

Empire and liberty.

I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

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

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

I love being in the United States Senate.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

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

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

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

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

I don’t write policy for my government.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

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

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

Ninety-nine percent of the men and women of the FBI… are just professionals. I don’t want Americans, if an FBI agent knocks on their door, to have to be worried about well, is he a Democrat or a Republican? He’s an FBI agent.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Well, I have great respect for Senator Hirono.

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.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

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.

Politically, the world is so confused right now – there’s so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.

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.‘

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.

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

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

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 consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

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

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

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

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

How can a president not be an actor?

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

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.