Famous Quotes & Sayings

Andrew Jackson

The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.

Amiri Baraka

If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist.

Allyson Schwartz

The serious crimes by the Sudanese government and the government-supported militias must be met with serious consequences. We must work for tough international economic sanctions on the Sudanese government.

Anthony Albanese

Despite the enormous role that local government plays in our daily lives, the constitution makes not one mention of it.

Anthony Albanese

Politicians who lack the vision to lead the community on big issues like public transport often hide their inaction by blaming other levels of government when anyone complains.

Andy Stern

Unions have been the best anti-poverty program that actually worked and did not cost the government a dime. But as unions grow smaller- not stronger- our ability to act as an economic mechanism to distribute the gains of our work and raise all workers' wages and benefits up is disappearing.

Many in local government will ask why should only a few areas have the freedoms and benefits of Enterprise Zone status while the majority lose out?

Ann Richards

I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.

Anatole Broyard

Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.

Robert Bork

The First Amendment is about how we govern ourselves - not about how we titillate ourselves sexually.

Robert Bork

The American press is extraordinarily free and vigorous, as it should be. It should be, not because it is free of inaccuracy, oversimplification and bias, but because the alternative to that freedom is worse than those failings.

Thomas More

Laws could be passed to keep the leader of a government from getting too much power.

Thomas Paine

Government is a necessary evil

Thomas Paine

It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments...

Thomas Paine

Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

Thomas Paine

Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security.

Thomas Paine

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

Thomas Paine

"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."

Thomas Paine

It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected, possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.

Thomas Paine

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

Thomas Paine

Wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age.

Thomas Paine

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.

Thomas Paine

A Democracy is the most vile form of government there is!

Thomas Paine

...the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

Thomas Paine

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.

Thomas Paine

It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.

Thomas Paine

Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.

Thomas Paine

Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.

Thomas Paine

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.

Thomas Paine

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Thomas Huxley

The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.

Thomas Clarkson

When mankind first saw the necessity of government, it is probable that many had conceived the desire of ruling.

Timothy Geithner

There is a basic lesson on financial crises that governments tend to wait too long, underestimate the risks, want to do too little. And it ultimately gets away from them, and they end up spending more money, causing much more damage to the economy.