Government Quotes

If we get a government that reflects more of what this country is really about, we can turn the century -- and the economy -- around.

Bella Abzug

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions

Edward R. Murrow

The happiest thing that can be said about democracy... is that it is one of the few systems that has been willing to risk a long period of confusion and mixed purposes for the sake of giving man a chance to grow up in mind and responsibility

H.A. Overstreet

Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave

Felix G. Rohatyn

You know why there are so many whitefish in the Yellowstone River? Because the Fish and Game people have never done anything to help them

Russell Chatham

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary

Reinhold Niebuhr

To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.

Wendell Phillips

Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right

William Allen White

Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else

Nicolas Walter

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern

Lord Acton

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists

John Kenneth Galbraith

Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life

Elmer Davis

Because of our Congressional committee system, our government is closer to a gerontocracy than a democracy.

Charles Frankel

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

Wilhelm Reich

The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.

National Review