Quotes about government, mostly pointing out how messed up governments can get.
The mystery of government is not how it works, but how to make it stop.— P. J. O’Rourke
I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President, and I think I’ll go along with them.— President Calvin Coolidge (R)
The words of a President have an enormous weight, and ought not to be used indiscriminately.— President Calvin Coolidge (R)
America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they’re broken, flawed, or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools—even when they’re working as designed—cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.— Bill Gates
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.— George Bernard Shaw
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.— President Ronald Reagan (R)
Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation— President Theodore Roosevelt (R)
Students will not be prepared for work in an economy that demands higher-order skills if their schools focus exclusively on the basics. Students will not learn to think for themselves if their schools expect them just to stay in line and keep quiet.— Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond, The Washington Post
This Universe never did make sense; I suspect that it was built on government contract.— Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast
What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?— Mayor Marion Barry (D-DC)
Too much democracy leads to tyranny.…Tyranny of the majority need not be institutionalized by law. Public opinion, when regarded too highly, also exercises tyranny.— Alexis de Tocqueville
A man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.— President James Madison (Democratic-Republican)
After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.— Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN)
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.— Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler
The things Congress does best are nothing and overreacting.— Ambassador Tom Korologos
Government doesn’t solve problems, it subsidizes them.— President Ronald Reagan (R)
One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.— President Ronald Reagan (R)
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.— Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.— President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.— Governor Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright.— Robert A. Heinlein
The United States has lasted well more than 200 years, but it is still young in the grand scheme of things. The apathy of the people can still be its downfall.— Scott Bradford
I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.— Will Rogers
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.— President Gerald Ford (R)
The course of history shows that as the government grows, liberty decreases.— President Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican)
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.— Sir Winston Churchill
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane[,] and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.— Henry Louis Mencken
It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.— President Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican)
It’s disingenuous to call something a ‘right’ if you simultaneously demand that people take advantage of their ‘right’ whether they want to or not. That’s not a right, it’s a command. Republics have rights; tyrants have commands.— Scott Bradford
One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.— President Ronald Reagan (R)
Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.— John Basil Barnhill, Indictment of Socialism No. 3
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.— Mark Twain
In free government the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors and sovereigns.— Benjamin Franklin
To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.— P. J. O’Rourke
The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.— P. J. O’Rourke
You can’t get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism.— P. J. O’Rourke
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.— President James Madison (Democratic-Republican), The Federalist #62
Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.— Margaret Thatcher
An unjust law is no law at all.— Saint Augustine of Hippo
Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.— President George Washington
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.— President Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican)
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power….— President Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican)
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.— President Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican)
It is not by the consolidation or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.— President Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican)
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.— President James Monroe (Democratic-Republican)
The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.— President James Monroe (Democratic-Republican)
A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.— President James Madison (Democratic-Republican)
It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this.— Sec. of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (Federalist)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.— First Amendment, United States Constitution
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.— Second Amendment, United States Constitution
No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.— Fifth Amendment, United States Constitution
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause….— Fourth Amendment, United States Constitution
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.— Ninth Amendment, United States Constitution
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.— Tenth Amendment, United States Constitution
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one….— Thomas Paine, Common Sense
The protection in FOIA against disclosure of law enforcement information on the ground that it would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy does not extend to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.— Chief Justice John Roberts, United States Supreme Court
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.— Edmund Burke
Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.— President Abraham Lincoln (R)
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.— President Abraham Lincoln (R)
[A] great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.— Benjamin Franklin
Such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.— President James Madison (Democratic-Republican)
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.— President James Madison (Democratic-Republican)
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it….— U.S. Declaration of Independence
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.— U.S. Declaration of Independence
With us the governing class is always saying to itself, ‘What laws shall we make?’ In a purely democratic state it would be always saying, ‘What laws can we obey?’— G. K. Chesterton, Heretics
It is not just an accident that in our age inflation has become the accepted method of monetary management. Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism.— Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit
For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.— William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England
Our government is still clothed in the garb of a republic, but more and more our representatives behave as if they are the American sovereigns and are un-bound by any limits on their authority. Many have forgotten that we are the sovereigns, we make the republic, and it is our job to keep it.— Scott Bradford
Now anything the people demand that is right it is most clearly and most emphatically the duty of this Legislature to do; but we should never yield to what they demand if it is wrong.— President Theodore Roosevelt (R)
I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I have acted as I ought not to.— President Theodore Roosevelt (R)
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.— Abba Eban
The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune…. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.— President Grover Cleveland (D)
