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Quotes about government

575 quotes from 235 people

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Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Address at Madison Square Garden (1936)
- Money
There can be no constitutional democracy in any community which denies to the individual his freedom to speak and worship as he wishes.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Fireside Chat (24 June 1938)
- Democracy
- Freedom
Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity — and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.
Richard Feynman1918–1988What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988) (From a 1963 letter to his wife Gweneth, written while attending a gravity conference in Communist-era Warsaw.)
The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it creates “order,” which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collision between the classes.
Vladimir Lenin1870–1924The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 1, Sec. 1; in Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
- Power
We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form.
John Adams1735–1826Thoughts on Government (1776)
England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people’s state.
Joseph Goebbels1897–1945“Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. The article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939
- Democracy
- Politics
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
Václav Havel1936–2011“A Word About Words”, speech accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (15 October 1989)
- Power
Mandela demonstrated that action and ideas are not enough. No matter how right, they must be chiseled into law and institutions.
Barack Obamaborn 1961Eulogy of Nelson Mandela (December 2013)
- Ideas
- Laws
Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot. But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice and fulfillment.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973Remarks on signing the Voting Rights Act (6 August 1965)
- Race
- Voting
Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973We Shall Overcome (1965)
- America
- Voting
A people divided over the right to vote can never build a Nation united.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)
- America
- Voting
We cannot have government for all the people until we first make certain it is government of and by all the people.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)
- Democracy
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis on the observance of the law than they do on its enforcement.
Calvin Coolidge1872–1933Address before the Women’s National Committee for Law Enforcement; as quoted in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 87 (1933)
- Laws
I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.
Lee Kuan Yew1923–2015Quoted in R. S. Milne and Diane K. Mauzy, Singapore: The Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew (1990), p. 85
- Politics
If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.
Lee Kuan Yew1923–2015From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000 (2000)
- Pride