Government Quotes

400+ Sourced quotes

Eleanor Roosevelt

Bertrand Russell

Joseph Stalin

Margaret Thatcher

George Washington

John Adams

John Quincy Adams

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

Eleanor Roosevelt

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and aeroplanes.

This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise. If now there is not a communist government in Paris, this is only because Russia has no an army which can reach Paris in 1945.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

George Washington

There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.

Margaret Thatcher

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure...

Bertrand Russell

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that 'the best government is that which governs least,' and that which governs least is no government at all.

Benjamin Tucker

In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed.

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.

By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.

I can also tell you on the Internet in China, you can have access to a lot of postings that are quite critical about the government. It is exactly through reading these critical opinions on the Internet that we try to locate problems and further improve our work. I don't think a system or a government should fear critical opinions or views. Only by heeding those critical views would it be possible for us to further improve our work and make further progress. I frequently browse the Internet to learn about a situation.

No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.

Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all, I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today - ethics, and moral...[Capitalism is] an infernal machine that produces every minute an impressive amount of poor, 26 million poor in 10 years are 2.6 million per year of new poor, this is the road, well, the road to hell.

Government is too big and important to be left to the politicians.

One of these days the people of Louisiana are going to get good government—and they aren't going to like it.

Mexicans: let us now pledge all our efforts to obtain and consolidate the benefits of peace. Under its auspices, the protection of the laws and of the authorities will be sufficient for all the inhabitants of the Republic. May the people and the government respect the rights of all. Between individuals, as between nations, peace means respect for the rights of others.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe, which serve to support tyrannical governments, are not the Christian religion, but abuses and corruptions of it. The religion of Christ and his apostles, in it primitive simplicity and purity, unencumbered with the trappings of power and the pomp of ceremonies, is the surest basis of a republican government.

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

Friedrich Hayek

The spectacle of a great, solvent government paying a fictitious price for gold it did not want and did not need and doing it on purpose to debase the value of its own paper currency was one to astonish the world.

Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there. I'm exposed with this book.'

William Julius Wilson