Government Quotes

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting

Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it

The most important political office is that of the private citizen

Louis Brandeis

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over two hundred varieties of cheese?

A survey says that American workers work the first three hours every day just to pay their taxes. So that's why we can't get anything done in the morning: We're government workers

Jay Leno

When a machine begins to run without human aid, it is time to scrap it - whether it be a factory or a government

Alexander Chase

In a state-run society the government promises you security. But it's a false promise predicated on the idea that the opposite of security is risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side

Theodore Forstmann

Treaties are like roses and young girls - they last while they last

Charles de Gaulle

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government

John Gardner

Morphine and state relief are the same. You go dopey, feel better and are worse off.

Martin H. Fischer

The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them

Cullen Hightower

The plague of government is senile delinquency

Mignon McLaughlin

No nation is fit to set in judgment upon any other nation

Woodrow Wilson

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good

H.L. Mencken

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference

Franklin D. Roosevelt

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session

Unknown

A Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy

Benjamin Disraeli

Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed

William Penn

Bureaus are extrusions from the body politic - they are pus

Martin H. Fischer

In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of the state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state

Baron de Montesquieu

The People, though we think of a great entity when we use the word, means nothing more than so many millions of individual men