Quotes About Government

It was not necessary and might even have been disadvantageous for a government to claim a direct personal commission and communion of the kind God had given some rulers in the Old Testament. A working government might need the support of the Church but not of God Himself in a voice from on high.

As a government employee, you can't testify against the government.

We thought playing in the Super Bowl was nerve-racking until we went to the Massachusetts State House to testify for an education bill.

We added Medicare Part D to a system facing bankruptcy and gave no thought to means testing it.

No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.

The retirement age needs to be raised. A portion of Social Security ought to be privatized, if not all. And there probably needs to be some means testing. It's a Ponzi scheme that's not sustainable.

There is no central government database that allows officials to monitor water tests by local systems.

The government [...] cannot be anything other than the organization of a minority. It is the aim of this minority to impose upon the rest of society a 'legal order', which is the outcome of the exigencies of dominion and of the exploitation of the mass of helots effected by the ruling minority, and can never be truly representative of the majority.

No political system ever perfectly expresses the needs of its society. No society in the English colonies constructed political arrangements completely faithful to itself.

For official purposes, these children do not exist.

million dollars (3.5 million yuan). Authorities in the United

Prior to the passage of the Patriot Act, it was very difficult - often impossible - for us to share information with the Central Intelligence Agency, with NSA, with the other intelligence agencies, and likewise, for them to share information with us.

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.

un Estado mínimo, limitado a las estrechas funciones de protección contra la violencia, el robo y el fraude, de cumplimiento de contratos, etcétera, se justifica; que cualquier Estado más extenso violaría el derecho de las personas de no ser obligadas a hacer ciertas cosas y, por tanto, no se justifica; que el Estado mínimo es inspirador, asi como correcto.

Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people who constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?)

One device used by fascist parties, but also by Marxist revolutionaries who have given serious thought to the conquest of power, was parallel structures. An outsider party that wants to claim power sets up organizations that replicate government agencies. The Nazi Party, for example, had its own foreign policy agency that, at first, soon after the party had achieved power, had to share power with the traditional Foreign Office.

Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.

There is no moral reason for government at any level to prevent the children of engaged and invested Americans of any race, ethnic group, or income level from reaping the full rewards of their talents and ambitions, nor interfering with parents' best efforts to do what they deem best for their children.

That lesson is unambiguous: culture matters. But it cannot be imposed. If a government takes its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, so does a school. The full benefit and effect is obtained only when all parties involved share a common vision, entered voluntarily and by choice.

Another difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time the legislature meets.

A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful.

As Peregrine Worsthorne argued in the Sunday Telegraph, British democracy did not require governments always to do what the people wanted; it simply required them to face the judgement of the people for the decisions they had made. This, he argued, not only promoted more considered government – for ministers would take the blame for failed policies at an election, however popular they might have been at the time; it also protected democracy itself from opprobrium.

The danger was that referendums might promote irresponsible government, in which ministers promised referendums for party purposes while disclaiming responsibility for the results. 'The new doctrine', Thatcher complained, was 'to pass the buck to the people'.