“Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law it invites every man to become a law unto himself it invites anarchy.”
Topic
government
940 quotes
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“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.”
“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”
“It's not the voting that's democracy it's the counting.”
“The people are the government, administering it by their agents they are the government, the sovereign power.”
“Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.”
“You don't pay taxes - they take taxes.”
“Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.”
“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.”
“I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.”
“Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.”
“Democracy is an abuse of statistics.”
“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.”
“Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.”
“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.”
“Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.”
“To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.”
“The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.”
“If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.”
“Americans no longer look to government for economic security rather, they look to their portfolios.”
“Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
“Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.”
“The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them.”