Quotes on Government

I have an idea about voting, how about on every ballot we include "None of the above". People may laugh at that, but what that is, it is a vote of no confidence in your government and I'm willing to bet that in some elections, 'None of the Above' would win. Imagine if you won the election but lost to 'None of the Above'. Wouldn't that make you re-think your positions?

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.

Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.

This country would not be a land of opportunity, America could not be America, if the people were shackled with government monopolies.

Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost! (96)

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.