Divided Government Quotes

Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Health care reform, the marquee legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration's first term, was passed before we entered the world of divided government. ~ Eliot Spitzer

I may sound naive, since everyone's decided the next two years are going to be all about 2016, but I look at what's happened over the years when there's been divided government. That's when we've done tax reform, that's when we've done entitlement reform - to move this economy forward on these big issues. ~ Rob Portman

In a democratic society freedom of expression and information are protected and government lack of concern in protecting them is a serious issue. ~ Arzak Khan

Be militant in your own way! Those of you who can break windows, break them. Those of you who can still further attack the secret idol of property ... do so. And my last word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to rebellion. Take me if you dare! (Emmeline Pankhurst, 1912) ~ Fran Abrams

The First Amendment exists to protect our religious liberty
to ensure that all Americans are able to seek out worship God with all our hearts, free from government coercion; it does not mandate scouring the public square to forcibly remove all acknowledgement s of the Almighty ~ Ted Cruz

This is a country for, of, and by the people not for, of, and by the government. If we turn it over to them we cannot complain about what they're doing because this is a natural course of men and we have to hold their feet to the fire. ~ Ben Carson

In the USA, we learn "art history" as Western art history, and the history of Asian, or African art is a special case; we learn politics by examining our own government system, and consider other systems special cases, and the same is true of philosophy. ~ Jay L. Garfield

Memo to Congress: America's problem is not that government is too small. It's the spending, stupid! ~ Bob Beauprez

The Ethiopian government's use of the railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa was, in practice, a hazardous regards transport of arms intended for the Ethiopian forces. ~ Haile Selassie

Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role. ~ Edward Abbey

I don't believe in the Constitution because I'm American, I'm American because I believe in the Constitution. ~ J.S.B. Morse

Government research has to go through peer review. ~ Peter Diamandis

What is the Liberty of the Press? Who can give it any definition which does not leave the utmost latitude for evasion? I hold it to be impracticable and from this I infer, that its security, whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any Constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the Government." - Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist LXXXIV ~ David Alan Corbin

I was critical of the Israeli government, however, for not being prepared for the move. One does not uproot thousands of people without planning in advance what will be done with them. This was a political and human error in which the government functioned poorly. ~ Norman Lamm

In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force ~ Frantz Fanon

How pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurors when compared with that of the government's Treasury Department! ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Some within the government and some former revolutionaries had finally realized that there was no way the Islamic regime could make us intellectuals vanish. In forcing us underground, it had also made us more appealing, more dangerous and, in a strange way, more powerful. It had made us scarce and, because of this, also in demand. ~ Azar Nafisi

A large fraction of our total economy has grown up around providing service and counseling to inadequate people
and inadequate people are the main product of government compulsion schools. ~ John Taylor Gatto

Cause and effect are never divided between two people. ~ Max Frisch

Dr. King's leadership reaffirmed the promise of our democracy: that everyday people, working together, have the power to change our government and our institutions for the better. ~ Maria Cantwell

The invisible hand of the market always moves faster and better than the heavy hand of government. ~ Mitt Romney

Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat. ~ Jonathan Alter

Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision-making by the people for the people. This is not simply an economic matter. In essence it is an ethical and moral question, for whoever takes the important economic decisions in society ipso facto determines the social priorities of that society. ~ Jimmy Reid

The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Yes, there is a Government of this changing world. The Government is not in the changing world. It is in the Realm of Permanence, and though the Realm of Permanence pervades this world of change, it cannot be seen by mortal eyes. ~ Harold Percival

I don't have to support Bibi, his government or any other conservative organization in order to come and play music in Israel, for people who want to come and listen to music. I think it's b******t to ask me to boycott Israel and not America. It's interesting that some people choose to pick on Israel and isolate her ... I was invited to perform and that's why I'll perform, as long as the border is open and I'm welcomed. I'm just coming to play. ~ Anton Newcombe

Now, al Qaeda's on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people. ~ Condoleezza Rice

After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career - in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad - watching the people within those borders burn. ~ Robert Fisk

The crisis in America that we barely notice anymore is that we've become two nations - divided by poverty, opportunity, and race. It's like a neighbor's car alarm that we don't hear anymore because it rings so often. ~ Arianna Huffington

The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action. ~ H.G.Wells

The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that its actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest. ~ Milton Friedman

Life is best enjoyed when time periods are evenly divided between labor, sleep, and recreation ... all people should spend one-third of their time in recreation which is rebuilding, voluntary activity, never idleness. ~ Brigham Young

Our plans for 'Superman?' I can't say. This is the most super secret thing ever. It's like working for the government, like I'm on a covert mission. ~ Zack Snyder

In ancient times, people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much a thought. But then God took a knife and cut everybody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half. ~ Haruki Murakami

I like being a foreigner. For me, to live in California is very pleasant - I'm more comfortable not feeling a part of everything, not feeling responsible for the government or the roads or the health system. ~ Eric Idle

The government is not your salvation. The government is not your road to prosperity. Hard work, education will take you far beyond what any government program can ever promise. ~ Mia Love

The [Apache] tribe was under siege by government agents, who had jailed some of the medicine men for practicing their rituals. Freedom of religion was cherished as a sacrosanct American right -- everywhere, that is, but on the archipelago of Indian life. ~ Timothy Egan

If people give up their attachment to expansive government, they will feel free to fight the income tax. ~ Sheldon Richman

What made you wake up one morning and decide to try to take down the United States government? ~ Aimee Carter

You know, you don't retreat in the defense of freedom. You don't retreat in the defense of moral government and limited government. You don't retreat because people are going to defend bad things. ~ Russell Pearce

In China, I lived in a dormitory, and the government paid for everything - food, buses. In Iowa, I had to run after the bus, and cook for myself. The first weeks in the U.S., I was asking, 'Where is my food?' ~ Liang Chow

It is not in the United Nations that the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved. They have to be achieved in each of its Member States, by the joint efforts of their governments and people. ~ Kofi Annan

But from the Parthenon and the Timaeus a specious logic leads to the tyranny which, in the Republic, is held up as the ideal form of government. In the field of politics the equivalent of a theorem is a perfectly disciplined army; of a sonnet or picture, a police state under a dictatorship. The Marxist calls himself scientific and to this claim the Fascist adds another: he is the poet - the scientific poet - of a new mythology. Both are justified in their pretentions; for each applies to human situations the procedures which have proved effective in the laboratory and the ivory tower. They simplify, they abstract, they eliminate all that, for their purposes, is irrelevant and ignore whatever they choose to regard as inessential; they impose a style, they compel the facts to verify a favorite hypothesis, they consign to the waste paper basket all that, to their mind, falls short of perfection. And because they thus act like good artists, sound thinkers and tried experimenters, the prisons are full, political heretics are worked to death as slaves, the rights and preferences of mere individuals are ignored, the Gandhis are murdered and from morning till night a million schoolteachers and broadcasters proclaim the infallibility of the bosses who happen at the moment to be in power. ~ Aldous Huxley

I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight. ~ Douglas Hurd

On some level, there's a limit to what the government really worries about when it comes to a guy like Ai Weiwei, who's talking to a limited audience of people. He's talking to people who more or less already agree with him. ~ Evan Osnos