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Quotes about government

575 quotes from 235 people

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Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.
John Updike1932–2009Buchanan Dying: A Play (1974), Act I
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
BVBill Vaughan1915–1977
- Voting
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Gore Vidal1925–2012“Gods and Greens” (1989)
- Democracy
- Voting
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
Simply having rules does not change the things that people want to do. You have to change incentives.
Jimmy Walesborn 1966Interview with Reason magazine (June 2007)
- Laws
Our supreme governors, the mob.
Horace Walpole1717–1797Letter to Sir Horace Mann (7 September 1743)
- Clever Jabs
In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.
Earl Warren1891–1974Speech at the Louis Marshall Award Dinner of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Americana Hotel, New York City (11 November 1962)
- Laws
- Morality
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
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
The establishment of our new government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness by a reasonable compact in civil society.
George Washington1732–1799Letter to Catharine Macaulay Graham (1790)
- America
Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last.
George Washington1732–1799Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette (25 July 1785)
- Democracy
For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
George Washington1732–1799Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island (18 August 1790)
- Freedom
- Religion
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.
Daniel Webster1782–1852
- America
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy.
Daniel Webster1782–1852
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
Daniel Webster1782–1852Speech in the Senate (27 May 1834), on President Andrew Jackson’s protest, The Works of Daniel Webster, 10th edition (1857), Vol. 4, p. 133
- Liberty