Quotes about government
575 quotes from 235 people
Leo Tolstoy1828–1910Letter to Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (October 12, 1896), translated by Nathan Haskell DoleGiving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
POP. J. O'Rourke1947–2022Parliament of Whores (1991), pp. xviii-xix.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (1920-1936), p. 279The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to George Sand, 4 or 5 October 1871You don’t get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.
George W. Bushborn 1946Responding to the difficulties of governing Texas, “The Taming of Texas,” Governing Magazine (July 1998)
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Part I, Chapter 11, Thomas Common translationIn context
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Speech at the Republican National Convention, Platform Committee Meeting, Miami, Florida” (31 July 1968)- Ronald Reagan1911–2004Time (17 May 1976)
Disarmament without checks is but a shadow — and a community without law is but a shell.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963UN speech
Edward Gibbon1737–1794The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776–1788), Chapter 3.The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.
Tacitus55–120Annals (117), Book III, 27The people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948From Discussion with BG Kher and others, 15 August 1940. Gandhi’s Wisdom Box (1942), edited by Dewan Ram Parkash, p. 67 also in Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 79 (PDF), p. 122
H. G. Wells1866–1946A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 5, sect. 2Prisons are built with stones of law; brothels with bricks of religion.
William Blake1757–1827Proverbs of Hell, Line 21
