150 quotes about Government
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Fear is the foundation of most government.
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A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
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Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.
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It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
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Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.
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Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
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Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
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Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.
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Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.
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The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.
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The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
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A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
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The art of government is not to let me grow stale.
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Public instruction should be the first object of government.
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Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.
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The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.
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But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.
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Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
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Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
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The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away
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By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
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Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.
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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.
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Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?
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Good government is the outcome of private virtue.
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Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.
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Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.
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The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are -- 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and, 3. Hope to all.
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Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.
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You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.
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Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
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I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.
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The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
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Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.
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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.
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In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.
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Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
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The less government we have the better.
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Truth is the glue that holds government together.
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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.
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An educated people can be easily governed.
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The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
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Governments never learn. Only people learn.
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Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
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It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
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The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.
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It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
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To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
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It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.
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The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
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A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
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Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
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All good government must begin at home.
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When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.
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Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.
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Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]
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The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.
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The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.
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Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
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Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.
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There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
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As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.
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Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
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The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
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My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
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I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office
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That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
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A man without a vote is man without protection.
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I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
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Safety of the state is the highest law.
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It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.
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The basis of effective government if public confidence.
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Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.
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The supply of government exceeds demand.
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To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.
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Any cook should be able to run the country.
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Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.
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You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.
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A Government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
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Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.
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Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.