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Quotes about government

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Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.
Charles Dickens1812–1870Little Dorrit (1855-1857), Bk. I, Ch. 10
“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass⁠—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience⁠—by experience.”
Charles Dickens1812–1870Oliver Twist (1838), Chapter LIIn context
- Clever Jabs
- Laws
The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself.
Charles Dickens1812–1870Bleak House (1853), Chapter XXXIXIn context
- Clever Jabs
- Laws
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Lothair (1870), Ch. 17.
- Democracy
- Politics
Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Speech in the Guildhall, London (9 November 1866), quoted in The Times (10 November 1866), p. 9
The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Lothair (1870), Preface.
A precedent embalms a principle.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Speech in the House of Commons (22 February 1848)
- Laws
I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881The Idiot (1869), Part I, Chapter IIIn context
- Justice
- Laws
To have given each one of the million Negro free families a forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democracy in the United States that might easily have transformed the modern world.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 602
- Democracy
- Race
The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would civilize the state?
Will Durant1885–1981VI—The Reformation (1957), Chapter 6, p. 229
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.
Umberto Eco1932–2016“Can Television Teach?” in Screen Education 31 (1979), p. 12
- Democracy
- Television
Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.
Albert Einstein1879–1955The World As I See It (1949)
- Work
In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.
Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969