Government

"Public government, what you think of as the government—its job is just to keep the citizenry in line, make sure they don’t make trouble for the real government. Real government is private government. Its job is helping rich people to become more so."

"Key to success is a stable state, not a stable government."

"Government is not a warfare of interests. We shall not gain our ends by heat and bitterness, which make it impossible to think either calmly or fairly. Government is a matter of common counsel, and everyone must come into the consultation with the purpose to yield to the general view, the view which seems most nearly to correspond with the common interest. If any decline frank conference, keep out, hold off, they must take the consequences and blame only themselves if they are in the end badly served."

"Better were the prospects of a people under the influence of the worst government who should hold the power of changing it, than those of a people under the best who should hold no such power."

"With more and more governments, however crude and experimental, dedicated to industrial democracy and universal brotherhood, the era of peace and joy in living will come on earth."

"The government has strategies. The people have counterstrategies."

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned."

"People should not be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."

"And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world."

"If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means—to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal—would bring terrible retribution."

"We cannot meet it [the threat of dictatorship] if we turn this country into a wishy-washy imitation of totalitarianism, where every man's hand is out for pabulum and virile creativeness has given place to the patronizing favor of swollen bureaucracy."

"The nearest approach to immortality on earth is a government bureau."

"In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government."

"Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,—every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,—can such a form of so-called "Government" continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there."

"The administration of government, like a guardianship ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not of those who receive the trust."

"For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering."

"The American wage earner and the American housewife are a lot better economists than most economists care to admit. They know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."

"In a political sense, there is one problem that currently underlies all of the others. That problem is making Government sufficiently responsive to the people. If we don't make government responsive to the people, we don't make it believable. And we must make government believable if we are to have a functioning democracy."

"The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other … is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been formed with seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist."

"Our form of government may remain notwithstanding legislation or decision, but, as long ago observed, it is with governments, as with religion, the form may survive the substance of the faith."

"Fellow-citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne! Mercy and truth shall go before his face! Fellow-citizens! God reigns and the government at Washington still lives."

"Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren."

"A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity, but a weak one is odious in the former, and contemptible in the latter."

"The system … is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit."

"But, sir, I have said I do not dread these corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain, and control them; but there is a corporation we may all well dread. That corporation is the Federal Government."

"Far more important to me is, that I should be loyal to what I regard as the law of my political life, which is this: a belief that that country is best governed, which is least governed …"

"It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life—the sick, the needy and the handicapped."

"I confess I have the same fears for our South American brethren; the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training, and for these they will require time and probably much suffering."

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe."

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy."

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread."

"I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I don't like to say this and wish I didn't have to add these words to make it clear but I will—regardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age."

"Before my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure. The outcome is by no means certain."

"Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting out to him—"Blondin, stand up a little straighter—Blondin, stoop a little more—go a little faster—lean a little more to the north—lean a little more to the south?" No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we'll get you safe across."

"I am struggling to maintain the government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to prevent others from overthrowing it."

"Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?"

"There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration."

"While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years."

"We must judge of a form of government by its general tendency, not by happy accidents."

"Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all around us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our press is still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty of association, why our representative institutions still abide in all their strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions we stood firmly by our government in its peril; and, if I am asked why we stood by our government in its peril, when men all around us were engaged in pulling governments down, I answer, It was because we knew that though our government was not a perfect government, it was a good government, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to the gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reason and public opinion."

"The free system of government we have established is so congenial with reason, with common sense, and with a universal feeling, that it must produce approbation and a desire of imitation, as avenues may be found for truth to the knowledge of nations."

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

"Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite."

"Thus, a people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it."

"When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society (as already observed) is not yet ripe for representative government."

"You have the God-given right to kick the government around—don't hesitate to do so."

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."

"[G]overnment even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one"

"Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn."

"Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants."