Government Quotes

Quotations
Quote of the Day
China's idea of fair trade is government subsidies of its textile and apparel exports to the United States, currency manipulation, and forgiveness of loans by its government banks.
Virginia Foxx

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.
Harry S Truman

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.
Jimmy Carter

The business of government is justice.
Woodrow Wilson

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.
Ronald Reagan

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.
Pierre De Beaumarchais

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
Will Rogers

Every single member of this Labour government, if you go back 20 years, has made the most extraordinary 180 degree turn.
Brian Feeney

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Henry L Mencken

What's so frustrating about this is that we are on the verge of seeing the beginnings of a democratic and permanent government [on Iraq]
Jack Straw

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
Ronald Reagan

If the pendulum swings, it may swing to a combination of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and, thus, to a period of minority government or coalition, in some form.
Vince Cable

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

Yes is the answer to that question. I've enjoyed being in government... if it would be useful for me to serve I would like to do that. [saying he would like to work for Gordon Brown despite his previous opinions of him!]
Charles Clarke

There is nothing anyone can do anyway. The public has no power. The government knows I'm not a criminal. The parole board knows I'm not a criminal.
Jack Kevorkian

Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman

I am concerned about a society that has demonstrably lost confidence in its institutions, in the government, in the press, in the church, in the military - as well as in business.
George Cabot

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free
Abraham Lincoln

I think we should do better next week, better the week after, and better right throughout the course of our government. Sometimes in parties these things happen, but it is not acceptable and I do believe that what people now want to do is to debate the future - about policy - and I think the issues about what Tony Blair will or will not do are going to be left to Tony Blair
Gordon Brown

The thought that... I would say anything on the euro other than what's the government's position is absolutely barmy.
Denis MacShane

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
Denis Diderot

It's a contradiction in terms, you can be open or you can have government.
John Nettleton

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people
Wendell Phillips

But without a caring society, without each citizen voluntarily accepting the weight of responsibility, government is destined to grow even larger, taking more of your money, burrowing deeper into your lives.
Jeb Bush

I want to lead a government humble enough to know its place - where I will always strive to be - and that is on people's side
Gordon Brown

I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.
Harold McMillan

The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity
Martin Van Buren

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labour and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.
Ronald Reagan

We will create a civilisation of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
John Barlow

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

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
John Gardner

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Aristotle

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
Will Rogers

Truth is the glue that holds government together.
Gerald Ford

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine

Please receive in the name of the Spanish government and the people of Spain our warmest congratulations for your election as Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and my best wishes for the Papacy which you begin today. [to Pope Benedict XVI]
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
Harry S Truman

A corporation's primary goal is to make money. Government's primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.
Larry Ellison

I believe this is responsible government, not as some have called it 'Big Brother government' [on ID Cards]
Tony Blair

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power
Benito Mussolini

Never trust a government that doesn't trust its own citizens with guns.
Benjamin Franklin

The most terrifying words in the English langauge are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Ronald Reagan

'Make America what we want it to be — a literate country and a hopefuller country.' —Washington, D.C., Jan. 11, 2001

'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

We intend to lead a government of purpose and direction so that we can offer the people of this nation the opportunity to move forward to independence, democracy and equality.
Alex Salmond

He's given a lifetime of service to the party. Without his contribution - among others - we wouldn't have had three terms of government.

I know he has been damaged by events in his personal life - those are, in my view, private matters and should remain so.

He should be judged by his contribution. [on John 'Two Jags' Prescott]
Des Browne

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Thomas Jefferson

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

Hope nothing from foreign governments. They will never be really willing to aid you until you have shown that you are strong enough to conquer without them.
Giuseppe Mazzini



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