Government Quotes :: Finest Quotes

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can

John Gardner

The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Mark Twain

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Noam Chomsky

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors

Thomas Jefferson

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education

Thomas Jefferson

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him

Thomas Jefferson

This Being of mine, whatever it really is, consists of a little flesh, a little breath, and the part which governs

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men...the master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order

Sir Francis Bacon

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. the most terrifying thing is what people do want

Clive Alexander Barnes

Universal suffrage is the government of a house by its nursery

Prince Otto

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action

Louis Dembitz Brandeis

All government -- indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act -- is founded on compromise and barter

Edmund Burke

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity

James Earl

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages

General Charles De Gaulle

As long as Nazi violence was unleashed only, or mainly, against the Jews, the rest of the world looked on passively and even treaties and agreements were made with the patently criminal government of the Third Reich.... The doors of Palestine were closed to Jewish immigrants, and no country could be found that would admit those forsaken people. They were left to perish like their brothers and sisters in the occupied countries. We shall never forget the heroic efforts of the small countries, of the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Swiss nations, and of individuals in the occupied part of Europe who did all in their power to protect Jewish lives

Albert Einstein

People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments

Dwight David Eisenhower

If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen

Samuel James Ervin, Jr

We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government: we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it

George Farquhar

Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not of men

Gerald R. Ford

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.

James William Fulbright

All free governments are managed by the com Where can I find a man governed by reason instead of habits and urges?

Kahlil Gibran

None of us here in Washington knows all or even half of the answers If you love your country, don't depend on handouts from Washington for your information. If you cherish your freedom, don't leave it all up to big government

Barry Morris Goldwater

Without glasnost there is not, and there cannot be, democratism, the political creativity of the masses and their participation in management

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible

Hubert H. Humphrey

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