Quotes About Government

One of the most startling commentaries on this century is the fact that millions more have died at the hands of their own governments than in wars with other nations — all to preserve someone's power.

A Christian writer has summed this up well: "The 'Christian state' is one that gives no special public privilege to Christian citizens but seeks justice for all as a matter of principle."6

What holds our society together is not force or even laws but moral suasion. Presidents rule not by fiat, but by the sufferance of free men. Without the collective goodwill of 200 million Americans, glibly called "public confidence," government is impotent, anarchy—or worse—inescapable.

The naked public square cannot remain naked, the direction is toward the state-as-church, toward totalitarianism."6

Only a church free of any outside domination can be the conscience of society and, as Washington pastor Myron Augsburger has written, "hold government morally accountable before God to live up to its own claims."21

If Christians today understood this distinction between the role of the private Christian citizen and the Christian in government, they might sound less like medieval crusaders. If secularists understood correctly the nature of Christian public duty they would not fear, but welcome responsible Christian political involvement.

Finally, the loss of moral authority in the law means we have forfeited the rule oflaw and reverted to arbitrary human rule. The rule of law cannot survive unless there is an unchanging and transcendent standard against which we can measure human laws. Otherwise, the law is whatever the lawmakers or judges say it is-which can only result, eventually, in the collapse of free gov- ernment.43 The postmodernist assault on objective moral truth has put us on the road to tyranny.

A democratic government is only as strong as the alert conscience of its people.

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.

During the twentieth century, communist governments killed some 100 million of their own people in peacetime, either by repression or by famine.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

Government is inherently incompetent, and no matter what task it is assigned, it will do it in the most expensive and inefficient way possible.

The only difference between Detroit and the Third World in terms of corruption is Detroit don't have no goats in the streets.

I was shown mold, leaking pipes, exposed asbestos insulation, broken toilets, cracked floors, malfunctioning heating units, feces bubbling up from the sewer pipes in the basements. I had seen better government buildings in the slums of Tijuana. Neven and the boys from 23 told me it was bad but what I was seeing was worse than the Baghdad fire department, which actually got more than one hundred fifty million dollars from the United States government, while Detroit got zero.

Women have a lot to say about how to advance women's rights, and governments need to learn from that, listen to the movement and respond.

Suggesting an additional definition for 'politics':] The art of organizing and handling men in large numbers, manipulating votes, and, in especial, appropriating public wealth.

Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained. In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game.

It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is so slow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government as service. That it should be a representative government they grasp, but representative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of the majority;--never thinking that it is the common good, the common welfare, that government should represent.

We ourselves, a revolutionary government, part of the people, have learned by always asking the people and without ever isolating ourselves from them. Because he who governs, yet isolates himself in an ivory tower and tries to lead the people with formulas, is lost and is on the road to despotism. The people and the government should always be one.

I'm a good person. I eat pretty well. I work out. I go to bookstores. I save people. For a living. I have better things to do than get hauled in for a medical checkup every week. Have I complained the last few months? Constantly. Was I a good patient? No. What can I say? When your primary care provider is a shadowy government agency, you have to be your own medical advocate.

I don't like Bush. I don't trust him. I don't like his record. He's stupid. He's lazy.

Perhaps, like bureaucracies everywhere, government officials in Singapore are uncomfortable with groups who appeal successfully to the public's sense of idealism, and whose work cannot be easily quantified in economic terms. Officials can handle individuals and organisations who are in it for the money, but seem not to know how to deal with people who seek and promote more intangible and selfless rewards.

Under Goh, the government continued to be suspicious of prevailing popular opinion and special interests, and focused instead on what it saw as Singapore's long-term needs

And, if even a polished, professional communicator like Catherine Lim misfired in her attempt, what chance did most Singaporeans have? That affair remained a prominent reference point, making Singaporeans conclude that, for all the government's explanations and clarifications, engaging in political debate was an extremely risky and unpredictable business, and that it was wisest to stay out