Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

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.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

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.

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

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

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

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

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.

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

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

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

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.

We are all the President’s men.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

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.

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

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life’s savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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.

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

In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

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.

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

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

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

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

The government argues that First Amendment rights are outweighed by the need to prosecute those who transmit classified information and documents.

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

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

I pay attention to politics and technology.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

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.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

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.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

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.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

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.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

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.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

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

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.

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.

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

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

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.

I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

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?‘