Quotes About Government Politics
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Democracy is a continuous, open process of civility.
A democracy can never be "done"; updating democracy can never be over.
Democracy can be nothing else but a continuous process, because we use it to organize our life, and life is nothing but a continuous process.
Democracy can be compared to an operating system or an anti-virus software; if it does not get perpetually updated, it becomes obsolete very fast.
Trusting the updates or the "improvements" of democracy to the elected and the owned mass media is like trusting the updates of an anti-virus program to virus creators; it defeats the purpose of updates or improvements. ~ Haroutioun Bochnakian
Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed. ~ I. F. Stone
Equality is the heart and essence of democracy, freedom, and justice, equality of opportunity in industry, in labor unions, schools and colleges, government, politics, and before the law. There must be no dual standards of justice, no dual rights, privileges, duties, or responsibilities of citizenship. No dual forms of freedom. ~ A. Philip Randolph
Almost all the prosperity of a public society and civil community does, under God, depend on their rulers. They are like the main springs or wheels in a machine that keep every part in their due motion, and are in the body politic, as in the vitals in the body natural, and as the pillars and the foundation in a building. ~ Jonathan Edwards
It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government. ~ Thomas Jefferson
In dictatorship people feared the king, in democracy they fear criticism. ~ Amit Kalantri
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
[Address to National Press Club in Washington DC, as quoted in Freedom and Union (April 1952)] ~ Earl Warren
Why is there never a headline that says "Government program ends as its intended goal has been achieved"? ~ Oleg Atbashian
Democracy saved you from being a slave, now don't try to be someone's master. ~ Amit Kalantri
We have nothing to destroy," said Rud. "All these things are done for already. They are falling in all over the world. They are dead. No need for destructive activities. But if we have nothing to destroy we have much to clear away. That's different. What is needed is a brand-new common-sense reorganisation of the world's affairs, and that's what we have to give them. I can't imagine how the government sleeps of nights. I should lie awake at night listening all the time for the trickle of plaster that comes before a smash. Ever since they began blundering in the Near East and Spain, they've never done a single wise thing. This American adventure spells disaster. Plainly. Australia has protested already. India now is plainly in collapse. Everyone who has been there lately with open eyes speaks of the vague miasma of hatred in the streets. We don't get half the news from India. Just because there exists no clear idea whatever of a new India, it doesn't mean that the old isn't disintegrating. Things that are tumbling down, tumble down. They don't
wait to be shown the plans of the new building. The East crumbles. All over the world it becomes unpleasant to be a foreigner, but an Englishman now can't walk in a bazaar without a policeman behind him... ~ H.G. Wells
By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed. ~ John Le Carre
In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss. ~ Thomas Jefferson
This is how best to effect change. If you reiterate the same fears and the same sensible measures with proper augmentation enough times, even difficult decisions will begin to seem like the only justifiable solutions. ~ Olli Jalonen
On December 9, 1994, Yeltsin issued a statement ordering the Federal army to execute the disarmament of all illegal armed units in Chechnya, or as they were known locally, the government. ~ Anthony Marra
Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs ... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that's when the real weirdness begins. ~ Matt Taibbi
I want to preach a new doctrine. A complete separation of business and government. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government. ~ Thomas Jefferson
I disagreed with the conduct of the war, with bombing civilians, categorizing everyone as the enemy or simply as armed men, with the racism and the disregard for those people. ~ Joe Glenton
That, ultimately, is the critical flaw or design defect intentionally integrated into every system, in both politics and computing: the people who create the rules have no incentive to act against themselves. ~ Edward Snowden
New Zealand has the cheapest government money can buy. ~ Grant McLachlan
In American politics, 'Europe' is usually a code word for 'big government.' ~ James Surowiecki
Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy ... .The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities ... To make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rather of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back. ~ G.K. Chesterton
General assumptions often lead to erroneous conclusions, but one cannot go far wrong in always assuming that whatever one's government is saying is a lie. ~ Michel Templet
If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers. ~ Clarence Thomas
Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't know much. ~ Will Rogers
Politics is a fascinating game, because politics is government. It is the art of government. ~ Harry S. Truman
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan
There are members of our body politic who tell us that the public interest is best served when government action is reduced to a minimum and especially when it is kept negative in character. But just now, the nation as a whole seems to be moving rather swiftly and decisively - as is the world as a whole - in the opposite direction. More and more, we Americans are initiating new forms of positive government action for the common good. Between these two tendencies the struggle becomes every day more open and more intense. And as we wage that conflict it is well to remember that the logic of the Constitution gives no backing to either of the two combatants, as against the other. We are left free, as any self-governing people must leave itself free, to determine by specific decisions what our economy shall be. It would be ludicrous to say that we are committed by the Constitution to the economic cooperations of socialism. But equally ludicrous are those appeals by which, in current debate, we are called upon to defend the practices of capitalism, of "free enterprise," so-called, as essential to the freedom of the American Way of Life. The American Way of Life is free because it is what we Americans freely choose - from time to time - that it shall be. ~ Alexander Meiklejohn
Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government? ~ Frank Herbert
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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
The paranoid fear of government is an extremist position, and every one of us ought to say that ~ Patricia Schroeder
But, Jefferson worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process.
Without that, he said, the wolves will take over. ~ Carl Sagan
I'll be like Scarlett O'Hara-I'll think about it tomorrow. ~ Ronald Reagan
There's no business that's too small for government to torture ~ John Stossel
Remove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utilities. Let private property go. ~ John Cage
It's all about truth," he said. "We don't trust governments because they don't tell us the truth. They make every story sound like it's good news, even when it's not. Those who are in power sing their own praises. Those who aren't in power criticise those that are. And no-one tells the whole truth. That's why we look for conspiracies. We know we are being lied to. We just don't know what they are lying to us about. ~ Will Once
The objective is to change the system and the behaviour it encourages, rather than replacing 'bad' people with 'good' people. ~ Owen Jones
One of the (many) problems with government is not that power corrupts or even that it is magnetic to corruptible people; rather, it is that we have been conditioned to tolerate corruption in power, and so we don't even try to hold our politicians accountable. ~ Michel Templet
One cannot argue with the President's position that riots are destructive or that they frighten away allies. Nor can one find fault with his sympathy for the plight of the poor; surely the poor need sympathy. But one can question whether the government has been working seriously enough to eliminate the conditions which lead to frustration-politics and riots. The President's very words, "all this takes time," will be understood by the poor for precisely what they are--an excuse instead of a real program, a cover-up for the failure to establish real priorities, and an indication that the administration has no real commitment to create new jobs, better housing, and integrated schools. ~ Bayard Rustin
The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it. ~ Anthony Burgess
Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it. ~ Zhuangzi
Currently the best educated and the brightest minds of any nation are not among its elected, but among its public, and in much greater numbers.
But even having a great number of the best and the brightest amongst us does not make us capable of installing a working version of direct democracy right away.
People who claim that it does, may be there to voluntarily or involuntarily damage the credibility of direct democracy.
Direct democracy needs a yet inexistent infrastructure to support the new mechanism that will render the public capable of constituting the experience necessary to domesticate direct democracy, without destabilizing our societies with needless haste, emotions and fractures.
One way of doing it may be the constitution of a nation-wide, internet reliant hence fluid, non-political organism parallel but totally hermetic to our representative democracies, with a unique objective: creating the means, platforms and protocols necessary for the public and all the specialists it contains, to communicate horizontally.
The public may decide to keep for the moment our representative democracies, but in parallel create an experimental version of direct democracy until we all acquire the necessary perspective and invent new working mechanisms of self-governance. Later the public may decide to have both representative and direct democracies sharing governance for a time, and experience first-hand the advantages and disadvantages of bot ~ Haroutioun Bochnakian
From the end of the World War twenty-one years ago, this country, like many others, went through a phase of having large groups of people carried away by some emotion--some alluring, attractive, even speciously inspiring, public presentation of a nostrum, a cure-all. Many Americans lost their heads because several plausible fellows lost theirs in expounding schemes to end barbarity, to give weekly handouts to people, to give everybody a better job--or, more modestly, for example, to put a chicken or two in every pot--all by adoption of some new financial plan or some new social system. And all of them burst like bubbles.
Some proponents of nostrums were honest and sincere, others--too many of them--were seekers of personal power; still others saw a chance to get rich on the dimes and quarters of the poorer people in our population. All of them, perhaps unconsciously, were capitalizing on the fact that the democratic form of Government works slowly. There always exists in a democratic society a large group which, quite naturally, champs at the bit over the slowness of democracy; and that is why it is right for us who believe in democracy to keep the democratic processes progressive--in other words, moving forward with the advances in civilization. That is why it is dangerous for democracy to stop moving forward because any period of stagnation increases the numbers of those who demand action and action now. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship - replete with ever more rights and responsibilities - would provide superb manpower for growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service. The ancient Western world would soon come to define itself by culture rather than by race, skin color, or language. That idea alone would eventually bring enormous advantages to its armies on the battlefield. (p. 122) ~ Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, and you should question your government. ~ Jessica Lange
I believe Moses was 80 when God first commissioned him for public service. ~ Ronald Reagan
For the most part, the evidence shows that individual Americans do not care a great deal about politics and are rather poorly informed, unstable in their views, and not much interested in participating in the political process. These findings have led some observers to assert that citizens are ill-equipped for the responsibility of self-governance and that public opinion (the will of the majority) should not be the ultimate determinant of what government does. ~ Edward S. Greenberg
You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.
(Larry King Live, May 11, 2009) ~ Jesse Ventura
I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own. ~ Winston Churchill
I can sum up the corporate government disability system with two words: Toxic Bureaucrats. ~ Steven Magee
Our government, conceived in liberty and purchased with blood, can be preserved only by constant vigilance. May we guard it as our children's richest legacy, for what shall it profit our nation if it shall gain the whole world and lose "the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere"? ~ William Jennings Bryan
Too many people, because they were white and poor, black and rich, or just plain busy with something other than politics, have felt they had no voice in our government. ~ Mark Sanford
Behind each breakaway movement is a breakaway demagogue who will set up his breakaway demagogue government. ~ Frank Zappa
Government was founded on the working premiss of being primarily an asylum for ineptitude and indigence. ~ William Faulkner
[Khrushchev] should get a one-ton medal. ~ Mao Zedong
The more women we elect to public office, the more wholesome the whole process will be, whether it's government, politics, whatever. ~ Nancy Pelosi
Corporations barely pay taxes. The corporate tax rate is already very low, but corporations have worked out an array of complicated techniques so they often don't have to pay taxes at all ... The scale of sheer robbery by corporate power is enormous. ~ Noam Chomsky
A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they're treated as public nuisances and evicted. ~ Robert B. Reich
Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection. ~ Donald Rumsfeld
Governments from the top fail as often as those from the bottom; and every great failure brings a sad social reaction, thousands and millions of helpless men laying down their lives in the unhappy process. Why may not statesmen study the past and avoid such catastrophes?
Delivered in his capacity as the American Ambassador to Germany, on October 12, 1933, in a speech to the Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Erik Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts. ~ William E. Dodd
The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it. ~ Thomas Jefferson
I would like Britain - and indeed other countries - to be run in the interests of people's needs and aspirations, rather than on the basis of profit for a small elite; for democracy to be democratically managed by working people; for democracy to be extended as far as possible, including in the workplace and the economy. ~ Owen Jones
[M]ore Americans work for federal, state or local government than work in any form of manufacturing. We crossed that Rubicon about 10 years ago. ~ Ann Coulter
Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government. ~ B.R. Ambedkar
The real struggle between an American government and the people was one of power, which was settled when they designed their Constitution, which conceded the sovereignty of the people when it came to politics, and the sovereignty of the consumer when it came to economics. ~ Ndabaningi Sithole
The roots of Self begin in consciousness and cease in awareness. The fourth state of consciousness is one of biophotonic origin. However, it has nothing to do with religious, political or scientific endeavours. It is that which creates governments, religions, sciences and, in our insane world, politics... ~ Anita B. Sulser PhD
Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds. ~ John Perry Barlow
Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former. Real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries. ~ Thomas Jefferson
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. ~ Thomas Jefferson
There have been times when the Federal Reserve has restricted the money supply and raised interest rates to gain an end, which had much better been left to another Government agency or the Congress to attain. The country could have had lower interest rates without sacrificing anything else. ~ Wright Patman
It is horrible how people will use anything as a political monkey wrench and to hell with the country. (Julia Child to Avis DeVoto) ~ Joan Reardon
I am always suspicious of the formulation that "politics" has prevented a great idea from being enacted by government. Politics IS government, in a democratic society. It's a challenge for school reformers, like reformers in any realm, to build a popular constituency for their work. If the people it's supposed to benefit vote against it, that tells me that the person pushing reform lacks political skill. And political skill is a good thing. ~ Nicholas Lemann
The UPA government is non-serious, it has taken the people for granted & it is not bothered about the youth. Their approach shows lack of faith in democracy. Our goal is to win the trust of the people & give dignity to them ... ~ Narendra Modi
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay
I decided to go into politics because of our Soviet-style government. ~ Bidzina Ivanishvili
I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. ~ Daniel Webster
The mass hallucination of the twentieth century is this: that all these national governments, which each year kill or threaten way more humans than they protect, and take a big chunk of your income to do so, are for some reason a great idea, an inevitable force of fucking nature. ~ Tyler Mcmahon
The first truly powerful and widespread impulse to anti-intellectualism in American politics was, in fact, given by the Jacksonian movement. Its distrust of expertise, its dislike for centralization, its desire to uproot the entrenched classes, and its doctrine that important functions were simple enough to be performed by anyone, amounted to a repudiation non only of the system of government by gentlemen which the nation had inherited from the eighteenth century, but also of the special value of the educated classes in civic life. ~ Richard Hofstadter
I went on to explain that it is an honour, and also that we need a transport policy.
"If by 'we' you mean Britain, that's perfectly true," he acknowledged. "But if by 'we' you mean you and me and this Department, we need a transport policy like an aperture in the cranial cavity. ~ Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay
Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis - how incentives influence behavior - to government. ~ George Will
What our investigation has shown is that the real problem, the central mystery of politics is not sovereignty, but government; it is not God, but the angel; it is not the king, but ministry; it is not the law, but the police - that is to say, the governmental machine that they form and support. ~ Giorgio Agamben
That day -- Monday, 25 February 1980 -- unfolded, in the context of British politics, much like any other day. Government, in those days, happened rather like a tree falling in a forest when there was no one there to witness it. For those among the Great British Public who wanted to believe that something was happening, the assumption was that something was indeed most probably happening, while for those who still needed to see it, or hear it, to believe it, there remained a high degree of doubt that anything was happening at all. ~ Graham McCann
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. ~ Winston Churchill
Yes," said Pericles. "Today's patriotism may be tomorrow's treason, if it serves any judge or politician. And so it would go with any statute you might define today, no matter how explicit the terms. Let us suppose that a future Roman Head of Stae is a plotting and ambitious his country. So he might say to his pople, 'I love my country and in the name of that love I propose such and such an amendment to the Constitution, of which our fathers would have approved in the light of today's needs and changing circumstances. In truth, the Constitution of our fathers really means so-and-so.' I assure you, gentlemen, that he will already have a band of fellow traitors who will uphold him, and help to confuse the citizens. Then, if any patriot would oppose him the traitor will denounce him for treason! You can be certain, then,, that the unfortunate patriot would suffer the penalty for the alleged crime. ~ Taylor Caldwell
The modern Establishment relies on a mantra of 'There Is No Alternative': potential opposition is guarded against by enforcing disbelief in the idea that there is any other viable way of running society. ~ Owen Jones
Governments will be provided with the choice of either accommodating themselves to co-ordinating proliferating human variety or seeking to reduce that variety by repressive measures. ~ Peter J. Carroll
Dear Government ... I'm going to have a serious talk with you if I ever find anyone to talk to. ~ Stieg Larsson
Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success. ~ Walter Bagehot
They despite and hate the government more and more, but they don't know how to set about changing it. The country is dying for some sort of lead, and so far all it is getting is a crowd of fresh professional leaders. Who never get anywhere. Who do not seem to be aiming anywhere. We are living in a world of jaded politics. Poverty increases, prices rise, unemployment spreads, mines, factories stagnate, and nothing is done. ~ H.G.Wells
I don't have too much time for fiction. ~ Ronald Reagan
Fascism is when corporations become the government. ~ Bill Maher
As God can protect his people under the greatest despotism, so the utmost civil liberty is no safety to them without the immediate protection of his Almighty arm. I fear that Christians in this country have too great a confidence in political institutions ... [rather] than of the government of God. ~ Alexander Carson
All I wanted was to be involved in politics and government. ~ Christine Quinn
Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials. ~ Thomas Frank
Supposedly, the government is in the process of saving us from terrorists. No one has quite figured out who is going to save us from the government. It seems it will have to be us. Part of what we built works great. Part of what we built badly needs fixing. It is delusional to think that a few politicians can fix what took several hundred million people to build - and run down. ~ Doug "Ten" Rose
The council is a place where everyone schemes against everyone else, and people talk incessantly about Power with a capital "Pow". ~ James Alan Gardner
The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government. ~ Thomas Jefferson
The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals; it was written to protect the government from becoming criminals. ~ Lenny Bruce