Quotes About Government

To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

Democrats believe that the federal government is not our enemy, it's our partner.

I think the country's getting disgusted with Washington partly because of the decline of civility in government.

Every program that ever helped working people, from rural electrification to Medicare, was enacted by liberals over the opposition of conservatives.

journalists fea their loss of authority in the digital age will undermine their ability to hold government to account. Yet the government has much more to worry about because the internet has empowered vested interests, and Oppositions, in a way that effectively cancel an election result within weeks of the final ballot being counted. p236

Before the news and polling cycles accelerated, leaders assumed that the electorate understood reform was a long game. Not anymore. The digital age has shrunk the public attention span and lured government into making each thing it says appear to be a big idea. p225

Genuine change, in the national interest, comes about only when a government forces its rusted-on supporters to give something up — as the coalition did on guns, and Labor did on protection.

Government is weaker today because the public it serves is quicker to anger, and because the Opposition has realised the safest way back to power is opposition, not policy renewal. No mandate need be respected because the Opposition can trust the media to set impossible standards for government to meet. p237

Ever wonder why voters never thank governments for giving them tax cuts? Because it's their money, and it doesn't buy what it used to.

Labor provoked the nation's first race-based election in November 1928 by accusing Bruce of putting 'dagoes before heroes'. That election slogan belonged to Ben Chifley, the Labor candidate for the Blue Mountains electorate of Macquarie. '[The government] had allowed so many Dagoes and aliens in Australia that today they are all over the country taking work which rightly belongs to all Australians,' he said.

The boom has not secured social cohesion. Instead, it has encouraged a mass outbreak of social climbing. Deregulation has taught Australians to see their self-worth through bricks-and-mortar and the size of the bribe they can extract from government. Avarice is the new black, and the political system has sanctified it with the term 'aspirational voting'.

I don't consider Americans bullies, but I do consider the American government bullying.

God does not take sides in American politics, and in America disagreement with the policies of the government is not evidence of lack of patriotism.

Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.

In managing our transport systems, our governments must constantly negotiate the paradox of mass movement. They must create a system which, for the sake of speed and efficiency, treats us like a herd, constantly prodded and coralled, divided, re-formed and forced into line. At the same time it must grant us the illusion of autonomy.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

The foundations of a strong economy don't rest alone on the decisions of Chancellors or the spending programmes of government.

Everyone in our society has had to make a contribution towards dealing with the debts.

Tax cuts should be for life, not just for Christmas.

If you want to change the way your banking system is regulated, if you want to learn the mistakes of what's gone wrong, then you have to change your government.

I think the British people are very, very attached to the idea that the health service is free at the point of use. But there is no reason why every doctor, nurse and teacher in this country has to be employed by the state.

If anything can lower the fever of populism in Real America, which easily spikes into white nationalism, it will be this: the experience of shared responsibility in worker organizations, and improvements in people's daily lives, partly made possible by the help of a government that is manifestly on their side.

My hope is that we will turn Greece into maybe the most transparent country in the world with everything on the web.

When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.