Quotes About Government

learned that there is no more heartless saying than that the people get the government they deserve

the British government considers a tax cut, almost all newspapers, no matter of what political tendency, describe the measure as giving money away—indulging in a handout, like a parent doling out a weekly allowance to children.

self-respect can encourage people to make the best of a bad job, but dependency on the state has destroyed the basis of self-respect.

Everyone who experiences this weight of governmental interference and regulation knows how little any of it has to do with its ostensible justification. A great deal of it is an employment scheme of otherwise unemployable scriveners.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

A democracy—that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not Guilty.

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

A man must first care for his own household before he can be of use to the state. But no matter how well he cares for his household, he is not a good citizen unless he also takes thought of the state. In the same way, a great nation must think of its own internal affairs; and yet it cannot substantiate its claim to be a great nation unless it also thinks of its position in the world at large.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not Guilty'.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.

The government is us; WE are the government, you and I."- Theodore Roosevelt

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.

The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.

It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company.

To befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business & corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

More and more it is evident that the State, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures.