quotations about government
We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
during her trial for voting in the presidential election of Nov. 1872
When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are something to be ashamed of. When a country is ill governed, riches and honors are something to be ashamed of.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society from necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit. The same creature, in his further progress, is engaged to establish political society, in order to administer justice, without which there can be no peace among them, nor safety, nor mutual intercourse. We are, therefore, to look upon all the vast apparatus of our government, as having ultimately no other object or purpose but the distribution of justice.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Origin of Government", Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary
A great sacrifice of liberty must necessarily be made in every government; yet even the authority, which confines liberty, can never, and perhaps ought never, in any constitution, to become quite entire and uncontrollable.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Origin of Government", Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can't be governed at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
No Country for Old Men
The best discharge of government is government of our selves, and there we must begin.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
A civil servant doesn't make jokes.
EUGENE IONESCO
The Killer
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
JAMES A. GARFIELD
letter to B. A. Hinsdale, April 21, 1880
In all governments, there must of necessity be both the law and the sword; laws without arms would give us not liberty, but licentiousness; and arms without laws would produce not subjection, but slavery. The law, therefore, should be unto the sword, what the handle is to the hatchet; it should direct the stroke and temper the force.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The populace must think their ruler is a greater man than they, else why should they follow him? Above all a leader must be a showman, giving his people the bread and circuses they require.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
WILLIAM BEVERIDGE
Social Insurance and Allied Services
All government -- indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act -- is founded on compromise and barter.
EDMUND BURKE
second speech on Conciliation with America, 1775
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
MARK TWAIN
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Those who love their country never wish to rule it.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, governments tend more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class--whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
Governments have a tendency not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.
RONALD REAGAN
attributed, Presidential Wit and Wisdom
For as in the government of states it is sometimes necessary to bridle one faction with another, so it is in the government within.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning