Quotations
'Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.'
Austin, Texas, Dec. 20, 2000
'I knew it might put him in an awkward position that we had a discussion before finality has finally happened in this presidential race.'
Describing a phone call to Sen. John Breaux. Crawford, Texas, Dec. 2, 2000
'The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law.'
Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000
'They misunderestimated me.'
Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
'They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.'
St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000
'The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I've looked at. I do not believe we've put a guilty... I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas.'
-All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2000
BUSH: 'First of all, Cinco de Mayo is not the independence day. That's dieciseis de Septiembre, and ...'
MATTHEWS: 'What's that in English?' BUSH: 'Fifteenth of September.' (Dieciseis de Septiembre = Sept. 16)
-Hardball, MSNBC, May 31, 2000
'It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.'
-Reuters, May 5, 2000
'Will the highways on the Internet become more few?'
-Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
'This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve.'
-Speaking during 'PERSEVERENCE Month' at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000
'What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody
else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.'
-The San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 21, 2000
'Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?' -Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
'Gov. Bush will not stand for the subsidation of failure.' -ibid
'I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating.'
-U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000
George W Bush
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. (31 August 1959)
Dwight Eisenhower
If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
Frank Herbert
And it's absolutely hypocritical for the political party that talks about states rights, to suddenly ignore states rights, that say that the federal government or federalism has no business in this kind of business.
Gary Ackerman
Never trust a government that doesn't trust its own citizens with guns.
Benjamin Franklin
You have been an immense figure in the government over this past decade, fulfilling a number of crucial positions [in case this leaves you none the wiser, it was about John Reid!]
Tony Blair
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Ronald Reagan
Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other.
William Blackstone
There's nothing our rulers [Labour government] enjoy more than banging up a decent, hard-working taxpayer, especially if they're suspected of voting Tory.
Richard Littlejohn
If the government spends money in the regions of the UK it is called subsidy. But if it pours it down the gullet of the cities and counties in south-east England it is called essential support of the infrastructure.
John Forsyth
The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people
Grover Cleveland
A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity, but a weak one is odious in the former, and contemptible in the latter.
George Grenville
Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
Ayn Rand
An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
Confucius
Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.
Joseph Heller
Truth is the glue that holds government together.
Gerald Ford
No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles
Patrick Henry
Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.
Ronald Reagan
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
Andrew Jackson
A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
Ayn Rand
Our flag is a thing of beauty and inspiration if you look at it with the right perspective. The flag is beautiful... it's not the fault of the flag some of the people making decisions for our country are not. The government makes very poor decisions... OFTEN... but don't blame the flag. Try to remember what raising it at Iwo Jima meant to the surviving 27 men who lived to see it raised on Mount Suribachi. How many flag burners would burn that flag?
John A Marshall
A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping
Ben Jonson
It is human nature that rules the world, not governments and regimes.
Svetlana Alliluyeva
The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity
Martin Van Buren
A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
Tocqueville
I wonder when, if ever, the British government will have the sense to propose peace?
Millican Dalton
A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.
Harry S Truman
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.
Thomas Jefferson
The difference between having a Labour government for business to having a Tory government has been fairly negligible.
Richard Branson
The happiness of society is the end of government.
John Adams
Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.
C Wright Mills
I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
Dame Edith Sitwell
The most terrifying words in the English langauge are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Ronald Reagan
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.
Ronald Reagan
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
I F Stone
John Prescott has made the government look greedy and ridiculous. Labour is seen as the corrupt party. The government has been fulfilling the old rule that oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them.
Lord Rees-Mogg
The business of government is justice.
Woodrow Wilson
It is a disgrace that the Government should choose the day on which the Work and Pensions Secretary has resigned to conceal these findings
Mark Oaten
He made an enormous contribution to British politics in opposition and in government [on Robin Cook]
John Prescott
Pick another category
