Government Officials Quotes

There is a group of entrepreneurs pushing the envelope, government officials that are making significant changes despite the odds, and visionary writers, academics, and colleagues whose work confirms, amplifies, and stretches my own thinking. ~ Robin Chase

Firstly, the current government officials are in power for their currency, but I'm informing you for your new currency. ~ Jared Lee Loughner

In practice, US officials seem to know better than to indulge in the patriotic myth that our constitution is the greatest system of government ever devised. ~ Matthew Yglesias

Nothing short of a federal investigation can begin to disclose the abuses which have woven a fine web of mutually implicating relationships between businessmen and government officials. ~ Ralph Nader

All public interest' legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials. The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle. ~ Ayn Rand

Disclosure of private e-mails from government officials has been a legal issue in many states. ~ Bill Dedman

I'm generally never at a lack for words, but it's indescribable how poor the response was from our own government officials, ... We could have coffee for three hours and never get through all the horrors I've seen. Where was the help when we needed it? ~ Hannibal

The trouble with Malaysia, however, is that whenever someone criticises the administration of the country, argues against the government's policies, exposes wrongdoing, marches on the street in protest, ridicules government officials, questions accepted truths and sacred cows, or holds opinions outside of mainstream - in other words, exercises his basic right and responsibilities as a citizen - he is branded as unpatriotic, pro-opposition or, worse, asked to leave the country. ~ Brian Yap

State courts usually rule that correspondence between government officials, about government business, are public records, whether they use their government e-mail accounts or private ones. ~ Bill Dedman

At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. ~ Louis D. Brandeis

The people in a position to resolve the financial crisis were, of course, the very same people who had failed to foresee it: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, and so on. A few Wall Street CEOs had been fired for their roles in the subprime mortgage catastrophe, but most remained in their jobs, and they, of all people, became important characters operating behind the closed doors, trying to figure out what to do next. With them were a handful of government officials - the same government officials who should have known a lot more about what Wall Street firms were doing, back when they were doing it. All shared a distinction: They had proven far less capable of grasping basic truths in the heart of the U.S. financial system than a one-eyed money manager with Asperger's syndrome. ~ Michael Lewis

In general, I avoided giving lectures or attaching myself while abroad to a university. To learn what I wanted to know, I went instead to rural communities and onto actual farms. Talk with university people, government officials and U.S. personnel stationed in the country was much less rewarding for me. ~ Theodore Schultz

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end. ~ Herbert Hoover

I've said we need to look at things from the perspective of working people and taxpayers, not from the perspective of government and government officials. ~ Scott McCallum

It wasn't necessarily the booze and brothels. It was the growing gap in the country between the haves and have-nots, the corruption, the warlords now in parliament, the drug lords doubling as government officials, the general attitude of the foreigners from aid workers to the international troops, and the fact that no one ever seemed to be held accountable for anything. ~ Kim Barker

Hooked up with the nazis were the manson family women, sandra good and linda "squeaky" froame. Sandra had been sentenced to fifteen years for threatening the lives of business executives and government officials, and froame was serving a life sentence for attempting to kill president gerald ford. They were like the Bobbsey twins and clear out of their minds. ~ Assata Shakur

We are for aiding our allies by sharing some of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We are helping 107 We spent $146 billion. With that money, we bought a 2-million-dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. ~ Ronald Reagan

The U.S. government officials lie when they talk about human rights. They're a bunch of hypocrites and liars.
You can't take it seriously. ~ Eqbal Ahmad

The seemingly omnipresent storm clouds hanging over the Constitution often make it hard to find a silver lining. Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties - from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office. ~ Bob Barr

Communism in America
In the early 1920's, fascism was undermining all vestiges of democracy in Europe and dictatorships were prevalent in most Latin American countries. Therefore, communism was considered by many as the best alternative for the working masses, and was embraced by many scholars, artists and authors, as a viable alternative form of political thinking. Many people in the Hollywood film industry became members of the "Communist Party of America," or at least they agreed with the communistic views and became what was called "fellow travelers." The Communist Party meetings were where people of like mind could gather and share ideas, as well as help each other with their budding careers.
The United States Government had other ideas and some of the most serious attacks on personal rights took place during these early years. Constitutional rights were thrown out of the window as some government officials took unlawful actions against foreign immigrants and labor leaders.
Being more tolerant politically, Mexico attracted many Americans who felt persecuted in the United States. Heading south of the border was a geographic cure that many of them embraced. ~ Hank Bracker

Our Founders explicitly designed our system so that all powers not delegated to the federal government (education included) fell to the states or the people; they believed that parents, not government officials, have the moral right to decide what their children are taught. ~ Glenn Beck

Some members of Congress will claim that the federal government needs the power to monitor Americans in order to allow the government to operate more efficiently. I would remind my colleagues that, in a constitutional republic, the people are never asked to sacrifice their liberties to make the jobs of government officials easier. ~ Ron Paul

Denial is not a solution. Governments naturally lie to maintain power. Eventually the deception perpetrated is believed by the government officials themselves. This encourages them to continue a failed policy until it's too late. Ego plays a large part in it as well. It's highly likely that our policy of foreign intervention will not be reversed and that world chaos will result as a new world order sets in - and it won't be the New World Order that interventionists have promoted for so many years. ~ Ron Paul

I hear all the time that peace activists are naive, that it is impossible to talk to extremists--people who have no regard for the lives of innocents... But in my experience in conflict zones the world over, there are always people to talk to. From members of Hamas in Gaza to Baathists under Saddam's Iraq to the Taliban in Afganistan to government officials in Iran, it is a major blunder to label all our perceived enemies as extremists incapable of rational conversation. People join militant groups for many reasons--religious, family, social pressure, revenge for some wrong they experienced, political ideology, poverty. With such diversity of motives, the are always some people who can be enticed to talk about peace. Our goal should be to seek them out, to strengthen the moderates. Unfortunately, our actions have only served to embolden the extremists. ~ Medea Benjamin

We should be alert to oppose the potential significance of the fact that some government officials and public policy advocates are describing the First Amendment guarantee of the "free exercise" of religion as merely "freedom of worship." But the guarantee of "free exercise" protects the right to come out of our private settings, including churches, synagogues and mosques, to act upon our beliefs, subject only to the legitimate government powers necessary to protect public health, safety and welfare. Free exercise surely protects religious citizens in acting upon their beliefs in public policy debates and in votes cast as citizens or as lawmakers. . . .

We must affirm our religious faiths, unite to insist upon our constitutional right to the free exercise of our religions and honor their vital roles in establishing and preserving and prospering this nation. . . .

We are the "salt of the earth." We must retain our savour by living our religion and by asserting ourselves as witnesses of God.

[BYU-I Devotional, Feb. 25, 2014] ~ Dallin H. Oaks

The trouble that public unions could potentially cause for citizens was one reason that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hero of Democrats and union organizers alike, opposed them for government workers. Republican Fiorello La Guardia, a great mayor of New York, opposed them, too. Unlike in the private sector, where unions were a needed counterweight to strong management, in the public sector unions had a big say in selecting management through the election process. As a result, they had a lot of power on both sides of the labor-management negotiating process. Roosevelt and La Guardia thus feared that, when government officials and unions battled over power, citizens could lose out. ~ Joel Klein

A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly. ~ Lemony Snicket

I don't believe that humans can be reduced to homo economicus, but as a group, government officials are remarkably sensitive to financial, political, and reputational costs. Thus, when new technologies appear to reduce the costs of using lethal force, their threshold for deciding to use lethal force correspondingly drops.
If killing a suspected terrorist in Yemen or Somalia or Libya will endanger expensive manned aircraft, the lives of U.S. troops, and/or the lives of many innocent civilians, officials will reserve such killings for situations of extreme urgency and gravity (stopping another 9/11, getting Osama bin Laden). But if all that appears to be at risk is a an easily replaceable drone, officials will be tempted to use lethal force more and more casually. ~ Rosa Brooks

You elected government officials to make decisions and it's about time they started making good ones. ~ Bob Riley

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have. ~ Nhat Hanh

Most government officials are rushing headlong to solve the problems of 50 years ago, with their ears assailed by the sound of snails whizzing by. ~ Eric Johnston

A common criticism of establishment journalists entails comparing them to stenographers, on the ground that most of them do little more than mindlessly write down and uncritically repeat what government officials say. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Perhaps, like bureaucracies everywhere, government officials in Singapore are uncomfortable with groups who appeal successfully to the public's sense of idealism, and whose work cannot be easily quantified in economic terms. Officials can handle individuals and organisations who are in it for the money, but seem not to know how to deal with people who seek and promote more intangible and selfless rewards. ~ Cherian George

When I wrote my eighth thriller, 'Inside Out,' in 2009, the villains were a group of CIA and other government officials who colluded to destroy a series of tapes depicting Americans torturing war-on-terror prisoners. ~ Barry Eisler

The American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country. ~ Michael Parenti

I was not born into a rich family or a family of government officials. ~ Chen Guangbiao

There will always be bosses, pastors and government officials over us - and this structure is actually a good thing. It is not our job to derail it or work around it. ~ David Pritchard

Lead is one toxic legacy in America's cities. Another is segregation, secession, redlining, and rebranding: this is the art and craft of exclusion. We built it into the bones of our cities as surely as we laid lead pipes. The cure is inclusion. Flint's story is a clear call for committing anew to our democratic faith in the common wealth. As the water crisis demonstrates, it is simply not good enough for government officials to say, 'Trust us.' For all the inefficiencies and messiness that comes with democracy, the benefits - transparency, accountability, checks and balances, and the equitable participation of all people - are worth it. ~ Anna Clark

Additional federal studies are under way to see if any contamination reaches taps or ground water used for drinking, but the program under which they are conducted, the toxic substances hydrology program of the geological survey, is slated to be eliminated under budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration, government officials said ... estrogens and similar compounds are increasingly the focus of research by the Environmental Protection Agency and many scientists because of hints that they alter sexual characteristics in fish and other aquatic species. ~ Andrew Revkin

Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society. ~ Jimmy Carter

Unwarranted search and seizure by the government officials was unacceptable to the American revolutionaries. Shouldn't it be unacceptable in the digital age, too? ~ Heather Brooke

It still amazes me how complicit the media are in propagandizing for war. This is true whether it's a Republican or Democratic-leaning entity. Both sides spout the lies delivered by government officials to encourage public support for wars. Whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat, the media will be supportive. It just may be that the owners of the large media entities are closely connected to the military-industrial complex. ~ Ron Paul

Iran's strong logic and firm diplomacy is the guideline for all government officials in negotiations on country's peaceful nuclear program with foreigners, quite resolutely. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom. ~ Amity Shlaes

The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home. U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color. ~ Ron Paul

Many of the benefits from keeping terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability. ~ Glenn Greenwald

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials. ~ Pope Francis

I think the country could be spared a lot of agony and the government could worry about inflation and a lot of other problems if [Nixon would] go on and resign. [There is] no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense. ~ William J. Clinton

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. ~ Andrew Jackson

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve. ~ Bob Riley

The same reasoning applies to civilian government officials whenever they are retained in excessive numbers and do not perform services for the community reasonably equivalent to the remuneration they receive. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The balance between faith and reason is for the determination of each individual, and of the people as a whole, not of unauthorized government officials uttering impious humbug as they arbitrarily try to define that balance. ~ Conrad Black

Unfortunately for many Aboriginal people, of course, they've been in the situation of being herded on government reserves. Their own responsibility's been assumed by Protectors of Aborigines and by government officials and if you become part of that system, it's always difficult to break out of it. ~ Lowitja O'Donoghue

This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous; he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. Each come just from an admirably appointed establishment: a table surrounded by the best people, their promenade sanctioned, as it were, by Church - two clergy - the State, two Government officials; by mothers, friends, old maids. ~ Ford Madox Ford

One of the greatest things I've ever seen happen was the morning I opened the newspaper and it said that some very powerful government officials had decided to change the name of "french fries" to "freedoom fries" and "french toast" to "freedom toast". It was impressive. I wanted to write a letter to them just to thank them, just for proving globally that they were absolute imbeciles. ~ Johnny Depp

Anti-government rhetoric appears to offer a vision of greater efficiency, self-reliance, and personal freedom. (For obvious reasons, it also usually enjoys greater financial backing and better organized support.) Unfortunately, this rhetoric ignores what has historically been most valuable about our skepticism toward government - the emphasis it places on personal responsibility from all citizens. Instead, it argues against the excesses of government but not against those of the marketplace, where there is great power to disrupt the lives of workers, families, and communities. It even argues against the basic protections government extends to the well-being of individuals, families, and communities, without offering an alternative way of safeguarding them. In fact, its extreme case against government, often including intense personal attacks on government officials and political leaders, is designed not just to restrain government but to advance narrow religious, political, and economic agendas. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that laws should not be public only when it is convenient for government officials to make them public. They should be public all the time, open to review by adversarial courts, and subject to change by an accountable legislature guided by an informed public. If Americans are not able to learn how their government is interpreting and executing the law then we have effectively eliminated the most important bulwark of our democracy. That's why, even at the height of the Cold War, when the argument for absolute secrecy was at its zenith, Congress chose to make US surveillance laws public. Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can't make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It's Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America. ~ Ron Wyden

Association of Petroleum Producers - spoke with federal government officials 536 times between 2008 and 2012, while TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, had 279 communications. The Climate Action Network, on the other hand, the country's broadest coalition devoted to emission reductions, only logged six communications in the same period. In the U.K., the energy industry met with the Department of Energy ~ Naomi Klein

I don't want to put words in Geithner's mouth, but I think he is generally against the revolving door of government officials taking jobs with companies that they have overseen or in roles that involve lobbying. At minimum, I'm pretty sure he felt that way about himself. ~ Andrew Ross Sorkin

These visitors remain far removed from the conversations between archaeologists, historians, and government officials concerning Bagan's legacy. Instead, they arrive intrigued by the cover photo of so many Myanmar guidebooks: a panoramic shot of the sprawling, temple-filled plains of a grand ancient city. To the vast majority of these tourists, Bagan isn't a complex matrix of preservation, economic growth, and cultural tradition. It isn't a place to be debated or discussed or analyzed. To many of these tourists, Bagan is simply a place to look around, to take pictures, to buy souvenirs. To them, Bagan is a postcard. This ~ David Bockino

Jack and Ev looked at each other for a moment in the boardroom. At that moment neither realized that they were both fundamental to what Twitter had become. The perfect equilibrium of two different ways of looking at the world: the need to talk about yourself, compared with the need to let people talk about what was happening around them. One could never have existed without the other. That balance, or battle, had created Twitter. A tool that could be used by corporate titans and teens, by celebrities and nobodies, by government officials and revolutionaries. A place where people with fundamentally different views of the world, like Jack and Ev, could converse. ~ Nick Bilton

African economists have argued that corruption - not Western colonialism, not lack of Western aid - is why Africa hasn't escaped poverty. These economists have begged Western countries to stop giving monetary aid to corrupt African countries because nearly all the money goes to corrupt government officials and thereby further increases their corrupt power. Meanwhile, in Europe, North America, Japan, Singapore, and a handful of other countries, corruption is far more likely to be prosecuted and therefore far less prevalent. That is a major reason for their continuing prosperity. ~ Dennis Prager

I try to be sincere with everyone, even the Chinese government officials. If I develop some kind of ill-will, anger, or hatred, who will lose? I will lose my happiness, my sleep, and my appetite, but my ill feelings won't hurt the officials at all. If I'm agitated, my physical condition will become weak, and some people I could make happy will not become happy. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Thus all civilian officials and military officers in the United States government who either knew or should have known that the Reagan administration intended to assassinate Qaddafi and participated in the bombing operation are "war criminals" according to the U.S. government's own official definition of that term. The American people should not have permitted any aspect of their foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged "war criminals." They should have insisted upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, and prosecution of all U.S. government officials guilty of such war crimes. Nevertheless, U.S. public opinion had been so effectively brutalized by five years of Reaganism that over three-quarters of the American people rallied to the support of their demented leadership over the destruction, injuries, and death it had inflicted upon hundreds of innocent civilians in Tripoli and Benghazi. ~ Francis A. Boyle

As such, I have found that American politics is best understood by braiding two forms of knowledge that are often left separate: the direct, on-the-ground insights shared by politicians, activists, government officials, and other subjects of my reporting, and the more systemic analyses conducted by political scientists, sociologists, historians, and others with the time, methods and expertise to study American politics at scale. On their own, political actors often ignore the incentives shaping their decisions and academic researchers miss the human motivations that drive political decision-making. Together, however, they shine bright light on how and why American politics work the way it does. ~ Ezra Klein

I believe Money is too important to leave in the hands of government officials. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

Local authorities keep an eye on proceedings. The Saigon Protestant Church in Ho Chi Minh City, for instance, one of the biggest in the country, has to submit a list of its event schedules, financial records and appointments of Church leaders to government officials for their prior approval. ~ Insight Guides

In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press. The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate. ~ Leonard Downie, Jr.

That was totally different from what the Danes did. When the Germans approached them rather cautiously about introducing the yellow badge, they were simply told that the King would be the first to wear it, and the Danish government officials were careful to point out that anti-Jewish measures of any sort would cause their own immediate resignation. It was decisive in this whole matter that the Germans did not even succeed in introducing the vitally important distinction between native Danes of Jewish origin, of whom there were about sixty-four hundred, and the fourteen hundred German Jewish refugees who had found asylum in the country prior to the war and who now had been declared stateless by the German government. ~ Hannah Arendt

When conducted with proper preparation, and in a focused and professional manner, oversight of executive branch actions can reveal serious shortcomings by government officials and help prevent recurrence; the 'Waco hearings,' conducted over a two-week period in 1995, stand as an example of such an undertaking. ~ Bob Barr

What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials. ~ Thomas Sowell

But even though nobody from the government ever says anything out loud about a lack of evidence being the real reason nobody from these companies goes to jail, we're all - including reporters who cover this stuff - still supposed to accept that as the real explanation. It's a particular feature of modern American government officials, particularly Democratic Party types, that they often expect the press and the public to give them credit for their unspoken excuses. They'll vote yea on the Iraq war and the Patriot Act and nay for a public option or an end to torture or a bill to break up the banks. Then they'll cozy up to you privately and whisper that of course they're with you in spirit on those issues, but politically it just wasn't possible to vote that way. And then they start giving you their reasons. ~ Matt Taibbi

If I were to be taken hostage, I would not plead for release nor would I want my government to be blackmailed. I think certain government officials, industrialists and celebrated persons should make it clear they are prepared to be sacrificed if taken hostage. If that were done, what gain would there be for terrorists in taking hostages? ~ Margaret Mead

Local waterways had long been contaminated from many sources. But in 1987, the state at last issued a seafood advisory for Bayou d'Inde, the Calcasieu Ship Channel, and the estuary to the Gulf of Mexico. ... From net to plate - fishermen, grocery stores, trucking companies, and restaurant workers - all were furious at the government officials who had declared the seafood advisory. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

I knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today. ~ Mikhail Khodorkovsky

When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognises the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle. ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

We continue to see undeniable evidence that abuse and torture has been widespread and systematic, yet high-level government officials have not been held accountable for creating the policies that led to these atrocities. ~ Anthony Romero

Contrary to popular opinion, the Constitution was not - and is not - a grant of rights to the citizenry. Instead, the Constitution is a "barbed-wire entanglement" designed to interfere with, restrict, and impede government officials in the exercise of political power. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

Contrary to the media circus which portrayed politicians as all-powerful figures, Kentbridge knew from experience the vast majority of US Government officials – elected or otherwise – were puppets who only had the illusion of power. ~ James Morcan

You're a sovereign as a citizen. If you're not involved in your government, you're not doing your job. In the long run that's very bad for the Republic. ~ Michael Novak

Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence ... and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile. ~ Timothy McVeigh

Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else ~ Ayn Rand

One reason I continue to oppose efforts to criminalize abortion is that I do not believe any government should have the power to dictate, through law or police action, a woman's most personal decisions."

"I consider that a slippery slope to state control of reproduction, and I'd witnessed the consequences of such control in China and Communist Romania. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

We need to prioritize those expenditures of the federal government in A, B and C priorities ... And I believe that on the C priority list are things like the Departments of Education and Energy, and those are the places where we should begin those defunding. ~ Sharron Angle

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Charles Darvin is wrong : Only the closest to the government will survive! ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

There was only really one time that I had a substantive interaction with the president [Barak Obama] directly, and that was in 2013 when we were deciding whether to file a brief in the first gay marriage case, the Perry against Hollingsworth case. That was a weighty decision about whether the United States government was going to come in and say that heightened scrutiny ought to apply and some state bans on same-sex marriage ought to be unconstitutional. And that was the one time in my tenure where I thought I ought not make this decision without talking to the president. ~ Donald Verrilli Jr.

Today we are at a crossroads. The technology is available for two great options: The massive surveillance state, or the renewed freedom of a deeply-involved citizenry thinking independently and holding the government to the highest standards. ~ Oliver DeMille

The case decided on Thursday, though, seemed promising to takings fans because it wasn't about compensation. It was about the requirement that any government taking must have a 'public purpose.' ~ Michael Kinsley

I think that any artistic decision that is based on whether or not you are going to make money it is not really an artistic decision. It is a business decision. And there are a lot of things that I can do to earn a living and a lot of things that I have already done to earn a living which produce the amount of capital needed to do this project. I came here to spend money on an English orchestra and record my music, so I can take it home and I can listen to it. And... if somebody else likes that kind of stuff, I will make it available on a record so that they can hear it. That is my part of the public service of spending the money to make this event happen. No foundation grant, no government assistance, no corporation, no comittee. Just a crazy guy who spent the money to hire English musicians to do a concert at the Barbican and make an album for Barking Pumpkin Records. ~ Frank Zappa

The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha". ~ David Pietrusza

...the consequences of this shift of emphasis from the police to the military in the power game were of great consequence. It is true, ascendancy of the secret police over the military apparatus is the hallmark of many tyrannies, and not only the totalitarian; however, in the case of totalitarian government the preponderance of the police not merely answers the need for suppressing the population at home but fits the ideological claim to global rule. For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army. Thus, the Nazis used their SS troops, essentially a police force, for the rule and even the conquest of foreign territories, with the ultimate aim of an amalgamation of the army and the police under the leadership of the SS. ~ Hannah Arendt

The government of the enlightened king? His achievements blanket the world but appear not to be his own doing. His transforming influence touches the ten thousand things but the people do not depend on him. With him there is no promotion or praise - he lets everything find its own enjoyment. He takes his stand on what cannot be fathomed and wanders where there is nothing at all. ~ Burton Watson

There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue, this is going to require an effort on everyone's part. ~ Michelle Obama

Americans are sick of the idea of the government taking over everything and trying to run it. We don't know how to run a bank, a car company. ~ Lamar Alexander

Schools and colleges are really a factory for turning out clerks for the Government. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

We trust people's lives to randomly selected juries as the only fair method; should we use any less fair method for a nation or a planet? ~ Peter J. Carroll

I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton