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Quotes about government

575 quotes from 235 people

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I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.
Donald Trumpborn 1946Speech at campaign rally (23 January 2016), Sioux Center, Iowa.
- Politics
- Voting
The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either.
Robert H. Jackson1892–1954Dissenting in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949)
- Liberty
The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.
Edward Bernays1891–1995“The Engineering of Consent”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 250 (March 1947), p. 113
- Democracy
Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. It has taught equality of man, justice and fairplay to everybody.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah1876–1948Broadcast to the people of the United States of America on Pakistan (February 1948)
- Democracy
- Religion
In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956“Sham Battle”, Baltimore Evening Sun (26 October 1936); repr. A Carnival of Buncombe (1956), p. 325
- Voting
We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it.
Václav Havel1936–2011New Year’s Address to the Nation (1990)
- Responsibility
An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.
Gerald Ford1913–2006Remarks in the U.S. House of Representatives in an effort to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (15 April 1970); recorded in the Congressional Record, vol. 116, p. 11913 and.
- Laws
- Politics
We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself.
H. G. Wells1866–1946World Brain (1938), Preface, p. xvi
- Knowledge
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Civil Disobedience (1849)In context
- Justice
- Laws
The British Empire was the nearest thing there has ever been to a world government. Yet its mode of operation was a triumph of minimalism.
Niall Fergusonborn 1964Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), Introduction, p. xxvii
- History
We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent.
Robert H. Jackson1892–1954West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), 319 U.S. 641
- Democracy
The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
Ludwig von Mises1881–1973The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962), Chapter 5: On Some Popular Errors Concerning the Scope and Method of Economics, § 10: The Concept of a Perfect System of Government
- Liberty
We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one.
Adolf Hitler1889–1945Interview with George Sylvester Viereck, Liberty magazine (9 July 1932)
- Race
I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.
Tony Benn1925–2014Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).
- Democracy
- Power
Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.
Henry Clay1777–1852Speech at the public dinner at Fowler’s Garden, Lexington, Kentucky, May 16, 1829, printed in Niles’ Weekly Register, Vol. 36 (1829), at p. 399