Quotes About Government

this difference lies in the simple fact that the Americans have acknowledged the right of the judges to found their decisions on the constitution rather than on the laws.

It is difficult to associate a people in the work of government; but it is still more difficult to supply it with experience, and to inspire it with the feelings which it requires in order to govern well.

In the United States, I am not sure that the people would return the men of superior abilities who might solicit its support, but it is certain that men of this description do not come forward.

In the United States, therefore, the mass of the institutions of the country is essentially republican; and in order permanently to destroy the laws which form the basis of the republic, it would be necessary to abolish all the laws at once.

Americans often change their laws, but the foundation of the Constitution is respected.

the people of the United States are so opposed to compulsory enlistment that I do not imagine it can ever be sanctioned by the laws.

Parties are a necessary evil in free governments.

Parties are a necessary evil in free governments. . . . America has . . . lost the great parties which once divided the nation; and if her happiness is considerably increased, her morality has suffered by their extinction.

When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I say there is the germ of tyranny, and I seek to live elsewhere, under other laws.

It is at once necessary and desirable that the central power that directs a democratic people be active and powerful. There is no question of rendering it weak or indolent, but only of preventing it from abusing its agility and force.

A government which should only be able to crush its enemies upon a field of battle would very soon be destroyed.

I grant that the caprices of democracy are perpetual; its instruments are rude; its laws imperfect. But if it were true that soon no just medium would exist between the empire of democracy and the dominion of a single arm, should we not rather incline towards the former than submit voluntarily to the latter? And if complete equality be our fate, is it not better to be levelled by free institutions than by despotic power?

All former confederate governments presided over communities, but that of the Union rules individuals; its force is not borrowed, but self-derived; and it is served by its own civil and military officers, by its own army, and its own courts of justice.

Man it is that makes monarchies and found republics; the township seems a direct gift from the hand of God

Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies.

The difference between a Welfare State and a Benevolent Despot is slight.

Publicly at the UN and in other international forums, American representatives condemned torture, particularly the communists' use of psychological techniques. Simultaneously and secretly, however, U.S. government agencies were already engaged in classified research to find more effective methods of mind control.

If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

I'm just a civil servant. We take the taxpayer's money and try not to do any work at all.

How peculiar it feels to speak about health care in America taking care of people's health while our government bombs the limbs off children in faraway lands. And starves and imprisons not a few of them at home. How odd that it seems not obviously known that true health care must mean, at minimum, deliberate non-harming of anyone?

We the People - shelling the Vietcong

Central Intelligence cutting Meo opium fields! China Lobby copping poppies in Burma! How long this Addict government support our oil-burner matter-habit

fortunately all governments will fall the only ones which won't fall are the good ones and the good ones don't yet exist

Hannah had spent her teens being scornful of religion, but the Christian churches were now the last line of defence against the indifference and stupidity of successive governments of different political stripes.