Government Quotes

If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government --and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws

Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy
Irish Blessing

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments
William Edgar Borah

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both

You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves

Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery

The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people
James Abram Garfield

I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society
Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve

Our enemy sees us clearly. ... They will not start a war. They're worried about one thing: If democracy develops here, if we succeed, we will win
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

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.

What experience and history teach is this - that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared ... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society
Shirley Mount Hufstedler

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests

Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption
James Garfield

Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master

If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State

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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