Quotes on Governments

Governments move armies, but only individuals can move hearts.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

Ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner.

Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.

Western governments have generally tried to contain genocide by appeasing its architects. But the sad record of the last century shows that the walls the United States tries to build around genocidal societies almost inevitably shatter.

Governments have always been wary of the arts because they're wayward and ambiguous and because they deal with feelings rather than facts.

It is easy to lay the blame on successive governments for failing to address health as a fundamental right for the Indian people. But the real tragedy is that we, the people of India, have not taken our government to task for this catastrophic failure.

Time and again, when member states and the governments are faced with an insoluble problem, and they're under pressure to do something, that something usually ends up being referred to the U.N.

Democratic accountability means that governments must be popularly accepted, with citizens empowered to replace corrupt or incompetent rulers.

Certain governments are suggesting that bloggers and tweeters aren't 'real' writers and, so, don't merit protection. A writer is anyone from a Nobel laureate to a debut blogger. They all get PEN's attention.

There is no doubt that the world economy is in trouble. But if governments or individuals use this as an excuse to reduce assistance to the world's poorest people, they will only multiply the seriousness of the problem for the world as a whole.

We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property.

When it comes to terrorism, governments seem to suffer from a collective amnesia. All of our historical experience tells us that there can be no purely military solution to a political problem, and yet every time we confront a new terrorist group, we begin by insisting we will never talk to them.

I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.

Over the course of history, governments, political regimes, and leaders have done some stupid things despite all arguments to the contrary, at times even against their own self-interest.

Routine is a declivity down which many governments slide, and routine says that freedom of the press is dangerous.

We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, 'What is real?' Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.

Accepting that Arabs have the right to elect their own leaders means accepting the rise of governments that do not share America's pro-Israel militancy.

Something is very wrong when our federal and state governments have a high tolerance for the unrestricted distribution of weapons of mass destruction, and it would be wrong to let this deadly form of neglect continue to facilitate bloodshed across America.

Remarkably, governments are beginning to embrace the idea that nothing enhances democracy more than giving voice and information to everybody in the country. Why not open their books if they have nothing to hide?

We often have an exaggerated sense of what nonprofits and governments are doing to help the poor, but the really inspiring thing is how much the poor are doing to help themselves.