Government Quotes

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

The statesman who would attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himeslf with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safetly be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

The prosperity of a country can be seen simply in how it treats its old people.

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.

Government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do it harm.

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

The great principle which this house ought to guard and cherish is that, when the tax collector comes to the private citizen and takes from him of his wealth for the services of the public, the whole of that money taken shall go for the purposes for which it is intended, and that no private interests, however powerfully they may be organized and however eloquently advocated, shall thrust their dirty fingers into the pie and take the profits for themselves.

A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.

The history of liberty is a history of limitation of government power, not the increase of it.

...a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.

It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence.

The statesman who would attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himeslf with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.Workers of all countries...unite!