These quotes about government will inspire you. A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and quotes about government, sayings about government, and proverbs about government.
Best Quotes About Government
- “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” ~ Edward R. Murrow
- “If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” ~ Samuel Adams
- “I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.” ~ Baron de Montesquieu
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“The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” ~ Thomas Sowell
- “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “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.” ~ Hubert H. Humphrey
- “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” ~ Norman Thomas
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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” ~ Edward Abbey
- “For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.” ~ Jonathan Swift
- “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.” ~ Albert Einstein
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“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” ~ Thomas Paine
- “You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” ~ Charles A. Beard
- “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.” ~ Ayn Rand
- “We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.” ~ William Howard Taft
- “It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.” ~ Robert H. Jackson
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“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” ~ H. L. Mencken
- “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” ~ George Washington
- “Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.” ~ Ayn Rand
- “Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.” ~ Richard Lamm
- “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” ~ Milton Friedman
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“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.” ~ Lord Acton
- “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, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” ~ James Madison
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“Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.” ~ Gerald R. Ford
- “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “A government of laws, and not of men.” ~ John Adams
- “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” ~ Ayn Rand
- “I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom, and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” ~ Edward Snowden
- “The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the “rule of the game” and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.” ~ Milton Friedman
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“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
- “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.” ~ Lewis Mumford
- “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.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.” ~ Confucius
- “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.” ~ Ronald Reagan
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“Democracy is an abuse of statistics.” ~ Jorge Luis Borges
- “A corporation’s primary goal is to make money. Government’s primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.” ~ Larry Ellison
- “Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America’s problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale
- “The people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.” ~ Daniel Webster
- “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” ~ Alan Moore
- “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” ~ Cory Doctorow
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“One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.” ~ Donald Trump
- “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.” ~ William O. Douglas
- “Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of goodwill and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.” ~ Milton Friedman, Quotes about government corruption
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“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.” ~ Ron Paul
- “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton, Quotes about government bad
- “The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign affairs. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“Governments never learn. Only people learn.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “Prohibition… goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes… A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.” ~ Woodrow Wilson
- “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” ~ Edward Abbey
