government Quotes

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.