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Quotes about government

575 quotes from 235 people

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Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that’s the end of the constitution as a working machine.
Gore Vidal1925–2012“America First? America Last? America at Last?,” Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992)
- War & Peace
We must present democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited progress by the human race.
George C. Marshall1880–1959Essentials to Peace (1953)
- Democracy
We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as people have become less vigilant of our liberties.
Ron Paulborn 1935Speech in the House of Representatives, September 17, 1997
- Liberty
Knowing is what counts. To know one’s country and govern it with that knowledge is the only way to free it from tyranny.
José Martí1853–1895Our America (1891)
- Knowledge
Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils.
Jeremy Bentham1748–1832Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X: Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society
- Laws
- Liberty
Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
Booker T. Washington1856–1915“The Problems of the Colored Race in the South,” lecture, Hamilton Club, Chicago (10 December 1895)
- Laws
- Voting
Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
Alexis de Tocqueville1805–1859Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XVI.
- Laws
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke1729–1797Speech to the Electors of Bristol (3 November 1774); reported in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (1899), vol. 2, p. 95
- Democracy
- Politics
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
Earl Warren1891–1974Address to National Press Club in Washington DC, as quoted in Freedom and Union (April 1952)
- Politics
A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.
Primo Levi1919–1987If This Is a Man (1947)
- Laws
- Power
There is simply no room left for ‘freedom from the tyranny of government’ since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare.
William S. Burroughs1914–1997Cities of the Red Night (1981)
- Freedom
What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.
Alexis de Tocqueville1805–1859Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three, Chapter XIX.
- Democracy
- Motivation & Goals
Democracy has to be judged not just by the institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard.
Amartya Senborn 1933The Idea of Justice (2009), p. xiii
- Democracy
Society cannot exist without an apparatus of violent coercion. But neither can it exist if the office holders are irresponsible tyrants free to inflict harm upon those they dislike.
Ludwig von Mises1881–1973Planned Chaos (1947), reprinted as the Epilogue to Socialism (1951 ed.)
- Power
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government.
Andrew Jackson1767–1845Veto Message regarding the Bank of the United States (10 July 1832)
- Power