Quotes About Government

The law can seem remote, arcane, the stuff of specialists. But it isn't, because for those of us who live in democracies, the law begins with us.

the role of government was to help the little guy; the big guys can take care of themselves.

And just as in the George W. Bush years, war spending plus huge tax cuts conspired to produce gargantuan budget deficits.

Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett had tried to block the entrance to the University of Mississippi of James Meredith, an African American veteran of the United States Air Force. Georgia Senator Richard Russell, after whom one of the three United States Senate office buildings is named, lauded the "great and courageous governor of Mississippi" and lamented: "It is regretful that we have no one on the Supreme Court that recognizes the fundamentals of democracy.

In 1957, General Douglas MacArthur said, "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fever—with the cry of a grave national emergency … Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

President Reagan ran on practically the same platform that I ran on in 1948: less federal intervention, less federal control, and less federal spending.

Democracy implies government by the people. Aristocracy implies a government of the rich … and in those words are contained the sum of party distinction.

true believers in the ability of government to do good—often find it difficult to limit themselves to a few issues.

Like most legislators throughout U.S. history, the senators of Desk 88 have been disproportionately white and male.

Thieves, spies and other wise guys are working everywhere…including in branches of the U.S. government.

A man should not marry after thirty years of age; should not enter the government service after the age of forty; should not have any more children after the age of fifty; and should not travel after the age of sixty. That is because the proper time for those things has passed.

I think peace should be done not only among governments but among people. It was impossible before the Facebook.

Now, I learned soon enough, that among the three, two don't trust the third one - the third one is the government. Both industry and unions feel the government is a talking organization and a spending organization.

If we give in to the hijackers' demands and release terrorists," I said during one of the heated government meetings over the coming week, "everyone will understand us, but no one will respect us." Yet the opposite—however grim the results—held: "If, on the other hand, we conduct a military operation to free hostages, it is possible that no one will understand us—but everyone will respect us.

On the day I took office, the annual inflation rate in Israel had reached a horrific 400 percent.

The government has a responsibility to maintain the public pension system, so that it will never become bankrupt, nor will the people who pay into it lose out. We must rebuild trust in the system so that the younger generation can feel reassured, too.

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.

I was a human rights defender, and I based my criticisms of the state on legal grounds. But authoritarian governments are not fond of shades of gray; they cannot tolerate any criticism at all

Apparently launching those new [domestic social] programs can be delayed for a while, after all. It seems we have to get some missiles launched first. (From Voices of Multicultural America)

Two more years of fantastic waste in the Defense Department and of penny pinching on social programs (From Voices of Multicultural America)

The cost of living is first on all of our minds this important year. Yet the President [Nixon] has decided that it is a year for travel. (From Voices of Multicultural America)

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty has become the doctrine of the executive in Parliament....

In countries where the government and political environment is honest, generally you will find that the people are honest, law abiding and helpful. And the reverse is true too. In a corrupt environment, an honest person has a hard time, whereas in an honest environment, a corrupt person has a tough time.

Even on education, his one accomplishment, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and he has left it unfunded.