Quotes About Government

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public's need for transparency and the government's need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

There is no point saying you believe in economic responsbility and being careful with taxpayers money if public services are a reform-free zone.

Unlike accredited zoos like the Bronx Zoo, San Diego Zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo, these are private menageries, and these people are frightened and there is an existential fear that they are going to be shut down by the government, by PETA, by HSUS, by animal rights groups. So they, generally, are very guarded.

If you're hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the Senate. You'll get the same kind of feeling and you won't have to pay.

The office of the president is such a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

People who leave Washington D.C. do so by way of the box - ballot or coffin.

Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.

The Americans believe they answered all first questions in 1776: since then they've just been hammering out the practical details.

All authority belongs to the people.

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

The government is concerned about the population explosion, and the population is concerned about the government explosion.

The father of confederation is deadlock.

'Rich by nature, poor by policy' might be written over Canada's door.

Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary.

There can be no return to prosperity while the government (of Ontario) believes that taking money from the people who have earned it and giving it away to the people who haven't, in exchange for their votes and regardless of merit, is the essence of fairness.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification, not just under the New Deal but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal. Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

Organized religion is making Christianity political rather than making politics Christian.

Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to jail. It is the same thing, after all.

Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.

In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.