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Government Quotes

Jefferson leads this page, followed by Milton Friedman, Robert LeFevre and Lincoln. Most of it is political philosophy, with a few jokes mixed in: P. J. O’Rourke in Parliament of Whores (1991) says giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys, and Will Rogers, in 1935, said a comedian needs no credit when the whole government is working for him.

Two well-known lines are flagged. “Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants” is credited to William Penn, but the oldest wording the notes cite is from a 1949 speech by Norman Vincent Peale. The one about a government big enough to give you everything being big enough to take it away is credited to Barry Goldwater, and the notes point to older versions of it.

Random quote on Government

Most quoted on government:

In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.

Abraham Lincoln

Unless some effective supranational government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects of peace and human progress are dark and doubtful.

Winston Churchill Robert Muller (1999)

There is no longer a single government that colonizes. There is only individual colonization.

Jules Van Praet

No government as such is ever in favor of the freedom of the individual.

H. L. Mencken Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Civil governments, in their first institutions, are voluntary associations for mutual defence.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)

It’s a sorry excuse for a government anyway. It always gets back to the same old thing, power suckers sucking power.

Kim Stanley Robinson Blue Mars (1996)

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.

William Ewart Gladstone

A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.

Ursula K. Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

Under the present government, all ranks of people are subject to militia duty.

George Mason Addresses to the Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788)

Perfect governments are only to be found where the prisons are full.

Stanley Baldwin

The public power to confront these errors of industry is government regulation.

Chip Berlet

You are my lover and I am your mistress and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination.

Violet Trefusis

Since our primary competitors [in space launch] are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable.

Elon Musk

The more freedom a people have, the more unlikely the government will murder them. Democratically free governments do not murder their own people.

Rudolph Rummel The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007)

I hope the present system of government goes right down to hell.

Floyd B. Olson

Adjusted for inflation, the federal government spent more on Medicare and Medicaid in 2011 than it spent on everything in 1960.

David Wessel Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)

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

Edmund Burke

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.

Henry Clay

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S. Truman

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