Government Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I repeat the question, 'Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government?'

Abraham Lincoln

In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.

A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed.

For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions come to naught.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.

Thomas Jefferson

Because there are no local or State boundaries to the problems of our environment, the Federal Government must play an active, positive role. We can and will set standards. We can and will exercise leadership.

No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government.

Thomas Jefferson

No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.

Henry David Thoreau

With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.

Thomas Jefferson

Political leaders or governments owe their position partly to force and partly to popular election. They cannot be regarded as representative of best elements, morally or intellectually, in their respective nations.

Albert Einstein

Non-co-operation enables us to show that in everything that matters we can be independent of the Government.

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

This administration has proved that it is utterly incapable of cleaning out the corruption which has completely eroded it and reestablishing the confidence and faith of the American people in the morality and honesty of their government employees.

If the Church is not now as bad as the Soviet Government, that is due to the influence of those who attacked the Church

Bertrand Russell

The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Henry David Thoreau

There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very foundations are set. The defense of religion, of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one, we must now make up our minds to save all.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.

For me popular violence is as much an obstruction in our path as the Government violence.

A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root.

Napoleon I of France

The people's right to change what does not work is one of the greatest principles in our system of government

Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.

Bertrand Russell